Venue
The Pavilion
East side of 21 Street at the beachfront, Galveston, TX
Opened: April 1881 (Nicholas J. Clayton, architect)
Built for: the thirteenth Texas Saengerfest, April 18-22, 1881
Capacity: 5000
Destroyed (fire): August 1, 1883
THE GALVESTON PAVILION
Wilde's lecture venue in Galveston had a short lifetime: it was destroyed by fire less than two and half years after it was built as the state's first building with electric lighting, and just over a year after Wilde lectured there.
The two photographs of the Pavilion below were taken concurrently. On the left a crowd gathers for an occasion for which a scaffold has been erected on the beach. On the right*, presumably later as the crowd has grown, we can see a high-wire performance.
* This photograph is sometimes shown incorrectly reversed; the towers of the building were on the left when viewed from the beach.
