The Moody Mansion is a four-story Romanesque Revival house built in 1895 at the corner of Broadway and 26th Street, one of the grandest surviving examples of pre-hurricane Galveston wealth. The Willis family commissioned it; the Moody family purchased it after the 1900 storm and occupied it for nearly a century. It is now open as a museum with most of the original furnishings intact — the Moodys rarely threw anything away.
The rooms are large and elaborately decorated, with original wallpapers, carpets, silverware, and the accumulated possessions of several generations of a very rich family. The guides are good at putting the objects in context, explaining both the Moody family's business history and the social world of Gilded Age Galveston. Combined with Ashton Villa and Bishop's Palace a few blocks away, it makes for a complete picture of 19th-century Texas prosperity.