Autumn At Hughes....on Market Street!

So many people are wondering what The Hughes Project is all about. We tell and explain to many but it’s time to write it out and post on the life at market street blog for our readers.

The Hughes Project is the Historical Building that we are restoring in Down Town Galveston Island, Texas.
Built in 1907 named Hughes ( in stone on the front of the building as well) , the mystery of the name to be revealed in our history research at The Galveston Historical foundation.
It’s a 6000 square foot brick industrial building on the edge of down town Galveston, still considered down town and yet right outside the historical district so therefore not included in historical restrictions in the restoration process.
Two stories .All brick walls , no inside walls. 23 up stairs tall windows and 11 down stairs taller windows . A back door off the upstairs back and a front door and two empty but boarded up store fronts for windows? Past pictures don’t show windows at all but wooden store fronts.

Historic Research shows that 25th street marked the “ other side” up until the seventies a white woman and her daughter where not allowed to cross to this side . We had an African American Surgeons doctors and surgery here. It has been a brothel three times. We even have the history of who ever lived/owned the building. it’s been a Star Cinema two screen movie theater. It’s been a bar and a church at the same time owned by the same person. It’s been a Mexican Consolant and more.

I will eventually post just the history found once we are finished putting it all together.

So as of our taking on this project Hughes had no power, no wires run through even, no plumbing, not even a water meter. Needed all new windows, floors, and the entire front is plywood . Also seven years of pigeon poop to clean.

What we plan is an entire transformation into a living loft for ourselves , Michaels door workshop down stairs along with a wooden sailboat building school taking up ½ the down stairs . ( I call the down stairs the man cave) . We plan to recycle the building, make an inner city self sustaining living project out of this. With a possible green house rooftop ( or at least 3000 square feet of rooftop gardening) . We plan to build a 2000 square foot porch off the second story floor over the back yard which will extend to an outdoor living place and kitchen as well as more above ground gardening. Below of the ground level back yard we will have compost barrels , hopefully eventually chickens for eggs and shade growth gardening such as mushrooms and potatoes . We are designing a rain catch system using a combo and knowledge of other designs as well as a system to recycle our sink and shower water for watering the garden. We also are designing our wind power system for our flat roof as well as a solar system possibly other than panels .

We want to prove that a regular young couple can do these types of projects. That recycling an old un-used building can bring great benefit to oneself plus their community . That you don’t have to live in the country to be self or near self sustaining. We are not sure if we will ever make it “ off the grid” or at least no usage but we are seeing how far we can go. We are not rich, don’t have family backing us. Work hard for what finances we do have and are a normal couple setting out seeking our dream instead of “ I wish” all the time.

In the mean time we have lived without power, water or a toilet and discovered our neighborhood, not watching tv and enjoying our beach and so forth. Narrowing down life without sacrifices…in fact with enjoying what it has to offer more.

We now have an outdoor shower ( old at the moment) outdoor toilet that flushes ( praise Jesus!) and we have a sink, a little kitchen set up with crockpots , fridge and a roaster and we finally have power to a t-pole and use of extension cords. We have a set up of a living room and kitchen and bedroom and kinda feel like a fun college experience with our lighting at night. It’s quite comfortable and next summer we will use window units for a/c. our dogs kept down stairs all summer with fans on them and it was quite cool.
We used screens for mosquito control.

In the next blog I will have our plans scanned in and post what the lay out is looking like right now for us (could always change).

We are always learning and researching on this type of project and would love to hear any input.