The Stewart Building

Julius Runge was twenty-three when he joined Kaufmann and Runge in 1874, and in 1884 the firm tried to corner the world cotton market. He sat on the boards of three railroads, a deep-water commission, banks, cotton presses and a cotton and woolen mill, and he led the Cotton Exchange and the First National Bank. Appointed consul to the German Empire, he held the post until his death. Elisabet Ney gave him and his wife twin busts in thanks for his help buying Liendo Plantation. After 1900 he moved his family to Austin but kept returning to rebuild.

What the plaque says

The Stewart Building Julius Kauffman (1856-1935) and Julius Runge (1851-1906), second generation owners of a commission firm established in 1842, had architect Eugene T. Heiner design this renaissance revival building in the north Italian mode. Contractor Robert Palisser completed the structure in 1882. Then known as the world's foremost cotton exporters and the initiators of coffee imports from Brazil, Kauffman-Runge also brought significant numbers of settlers to Texas. They housed commodities on the building's ground floor, and had offices above. Many highly-respected Galveston firms had business quarters here. In 1905 the property was bought by Maco Stewart (1871-1938), who redesigned the interior to create a gallery effect with an arched skylight on the top floor. A foresighted, dynamic lawyer, Maco Stewart in 1908 founded Stewart Title Guaranty Company, now (1978) the largest title firm in Texas. Throughout expansion across the United States, it continuously had offices in this structure of its origin. Stewart Title Company has restored the building, replacing the ornate cornice which had been missing since the famous 1900 Galveston storm.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Strand — steps away
  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.
• Texas Seaport Museum and the Elissa — steps away
  An iron barque launched in Aberdeen in 1877 that called at Galveston twice, ended up smuggling in the Adriatic, and was bought back from a Greek scrapyard to sail again from Pier 22.
• 1859 Ashton Villa — 0.5 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 — 0.6 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.

More markers nearby

• Juneteenth — steps away
• William Lewis Moody, Jr. — steps away
• Leon & H. Blum Co. Building — steps away
• Old Galveston Market House and City Hall — steps away