City crews were scheduled to start setting up traffic controls at Broadway and 25th Street on Sept. 28. The lane closest to the Texas Heroes Monument stays closed through Oct. 23, according to city officials quoted in the Galveston County Daily News. Above that lane, a 22-foot bronze Victory has gone eleven years without major maintenance. The question of who is responsible for her has gone unanswered for longer than that.
The work itself is simple to describe. Council approved a contract of about $121,300 with R. Alden Marshall & Associates on June 25. The crew will remove surface dirt from the bronze, restore its patina and apply new protective wax. It will also clean and seal the granite, inspect it, and possibly repair joints and mortar. The city's plan is to wash and wax one statue. The Daily News reported that the process took nearly two years of votes, requests for proposals and ownership questions to get funded.
The Scaffolding Costs More Than the Cleaning
Estimates for this job have run into six figures, and the Daily News attributes that largely to logistics. The monument stands in the middle of the island's best-known intersection, so the bill includes scaffolding and traffic control as well as conservation work.
Council voted 5-2 in December 2024 to delay an earlier contract worth about $181,000. The reporting doesn't itemize what separates that bid from the $121,300 one that passed. Both prices reflect the same fixed problem of working on a monument in the middle of Broadway.
City officials say this kind of maintenance is typically needed every eight to 10 years. The last major work was in 2015, so the calendar says the monument was due somewhere between 2023 and 2025. The 2026 work is running past the top of that window. Galveston Historical Foundation CEO Dwayne Jones wrote that an earlier restoration "clouded" quickly because materials important to the design were not maintained. He added that the coastal environment is eroding the statue.
A Monument to Texas That Sits on a State Highway
The reason the cleaning stalled is the same reason the monument looks like it belongs to Galveston. Henry Rosenberg's will set aside $50,000 for a monument to the heroes of the Texas Revolution. Jones points out that the finished sculpture makes no reference to Galveston. He calls it a monument to the Republic of Texas.
Officials said the monument was donated to the state in 1900 but never formally transferred to the city. Broadway is also State Highway 87, so the monument technically stands on state property. The Houston Chronicle reported that this has made the city historically reluctant to spend its own money on it. When the Daily News asked the Texas Department of Transportation's Houston District, spokesman Danny Perez said the department's landscape architect was unaware of any involvement. He said the Texas Historical Commission may have oversight of work involving the monument.
City Manager Brian Maxwell has been direct about the practical result. "If you wait for the state to do it, it's never going to happen," he said, according to the Daily News.
Money was the second obstacle. The Daily News reported that state law allows hotel occupancy tax revenue for historic preservation. It also reported an argument that a local policy from a previous council limits that money to city-owned assets. Officials said hotel occupancy tax revenue will pay for this round. Nothing in the reporting says the ownership question was settled first. The city decided to pay before anyone decided the monument was the city's.
Four Decades of the Same Argument
The table below strings together the dates from the reporting.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| April 21, 1900 | Monument unveiled before an estimated 10,000 people, five months before the 1900 hurricane |
| 1987 | Legislature creates the Texas Heroes Monument Commission |
| 1991 | Gov. Ann Richards rededicates the monument on San Jacinto Day after the commission raises more than $250,000 for a restoration |
| 2015 | Last major maintenance, which reportedly removed roughly 2,000 pounds of dead pigeons and their droppings |
| December 2024 | Council votes 5-2 to delay an approximately $181,000 contract |
| March 2026 | Council reissues the request for proposals on a motion by Councilman Alex Porretto, which passes unanimously |
| June 25, 2026 | Council approves the roughly $121,300 contract |
| Sept. 28 to Oct. 23, 2026 | Traffic controls go up and the lane nearest the monument stays closed |
After the 1900 row, every entry is either a restoration or a debate about who should pay for one. The Chronicle reports that the question of city versus state responsibility has resurfaced periodically since at least the mid-1980s without being resolved.
The 1991 row carries a detail worth keeping. Media coverage of the rededication attributed ownership to the city, even though a recent resolution had reiterated that the monument was dedicated to the State of Texas. According to Jones, that misinformation persists and has hindered efforts to have the monument declared a state historic landmark. That misattributed 1991 coverage still complicates the push for state landmark status.
What Would Break the Cycle
If this cleaning holds to the same eight-to-10-year cadence, the next one falls due somewhere between 2034 and 2036. Three efforts in the reporting aim at making that one uneventful.
A monument inventory. Councilman Bob Brown wrote in the Daily News in March that he hoped to bring council a plan covering Galveston's historic public monuments, not just this one. The plan would inventory them, assess their condition and set a maintenance strategy. He argued that bids on all the monuments that need work, submitted together, may save money. He named the World War II memorial at 23rd Street and Broadway, the World War I memorial and the Grade Raising Monument on the Seawall. Brown hoped to present it in April. I did not find a report confirming that it was delivered.
A public art plan. Porretto told the Daily News that the Arts Development Commission is working on a comprehensive plan for all public art and monuments.
A legislative fix. Jones suggested to the Chronicle that one or more of Galveston's state legislators introduce a resolution in the 2027 session. The resolution would assign the monument once and for all to either the City of Galveston or the Texas Historical Commission and allocate money for its upkeep.
Each of these efforts targets the same weak point. The cleaning gets paid for when a council decides to pay for it, and the decision comes around every decade. The 2027 session is the next place that decision could change.
Looking at It Before the Wax
The monument is due to look different by the time the lane reopens, so the next few weeks show what an eleven-year gap between major maintenance looks like. The Houston Chronicle described the column as needing cleaning. The Rosenberg Library Museum notes that the site was chosen at the intersection of Galveston's two widest thoroughfares. In March 1898, 25th Street was renamed Rosenberg Avenue in the donor's honor.
The details reward a slow look. Sculptor Louis Amateis carved the granite sections on site in Galveston. The bronze pieces were cast in Rome and shipped to the island for assembly. The four base panels depict the massacre at Goliad, the siege of the Alamo, the Battle of San Jacinto and the surrender of Santa Anna. Defiance faces east with the date October 2, 1835, carved beneath her. Peace faces west. Victory stands at the top, pointing north toward the San Jacinto battlefield, and the Galveston Historical Foundation puts the full height at 74 feet. Other sources round it to 72 or 75.
Two other Broadway stops sit within a few blocks. The World War II memorial stands in the Broadway median at 23rd Street and lists the Galveston County service members who died in the war. Ashton Villa is at 2328 Broadway. The Rosenberg Library, which was among Henry Rosenberg's bequests, is at 2310 Sealy.
The lane closest to the monument is scheduled to reopen after Oct. 23.
Spagnola Realty Group is led by Galveston native Caroline Spagnola. If you'd like to talk about the island, from Broadway's landmarks to the Seawall, schedule a consultation and we'll start with what you want to know.
