Olga Samaroff

Samaroff's marriage and her pupils fill the years the plaque passes over. She married the conductor Leopold Stokowski in 1911, pushed both of them toward the new business of recording, and divorced him in 1923. After an arm injury in 1926 she turned to teaching, and her students included William Kapell, Eugene List, Rosalyn Tureck and Alexis Weissenberg. She began the Laymen's Music Courses in 1932, helped organize the Musicians' Emergency Aid during the Depression, and in 1935 joined the group planning the Federal Music Project. In 1944 President Roosevelt named her to a State Department music committee.

What the plaque says

Olga Samaroff Born as Lucy Mary Olga Agnes Hickenlooper to Carlos and Jane (Loening) Hickenlooper in San Antonio, Lucy grew up in a home in the wealthy Silk Stocking District of Galveston. Lucy's father worked for the Thos. Googan & Bro. Music Company and her mother and grandmother taught piano lessons from the family home. As their star pupil, Lucy began to play public concerts at an early age where prominent musicians recommended European training. Her family continued to live in Galveston until the 1900 storm. In 1894, Lucy traveled with her grandmother to Paris to continue her study of piano. A year later she won a scholarship to the Conservatoire de Paris, the first American woman to do so. Following her graduation in 1897, Lucy married Russian civil servant Boris Loutzky and moved to St. Petersburg where she devoted her time to general musical study. After three years, Lucy divorced Boris and began to pursue her concert pianist aspirations. In 1905, to launch her American career, Lucy changed her name to Olga Samaroff, a more European-sounding name, rented her own concert hall and hired a manager. Olga Samaroff was an instant success. She went on to play worldwide, including at Carnegie Hall, the Met, Royal Albert Hall, and in Paris, Rome, Berlin, Vienna and more. Following her concert career, Olga taught at the new Juilliard School of Music, was a commuting faculty member for the Philadelphia Conservatory and published several books on music, including an autobiography. Her legacy is remembered through her music and the Schubert Memorial, a competition for American musicians to perform and compete. (2016)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• 1859 Ashton Villa — 0.2 mi
  A brick Italianate house on Broadway, built with enslaved labor in 1859, whose lawn has held Galveston's Juneteenth commemoration of General Orders, No. 3 every year since 1979.
• Moody Mansion — 0.3 mi
  A four-story, 28,000-square-foot house on Broadway, finished in 1895, that W. L. Moody Jr. bought just after the 1900 storm and his family kept until Hurricane Alicia in 1983.
• The Strand — 0.7 mi
  Five blocks of iron-front brick buildings near the harbor that were once called the Wall Street of the Southwest, emptied after 1900 and brought back by preservationists from the 1960s.
• 1892 Bishop's Palace — 0.7 mi
  Nicholas Clayton's stone house on Broadway for the railroad lawyer Walter Gresham, later home to Galveston's Catholic bishops and one of the most admired Victorian houses in the country.

More markers nearby

• Site of Ursuline Convent and Academy — steps away
• Jack Johnson — steps away
• George Dealey — steps away
• Avenue L Missionary Baptist Church — 0.2 mi