The space now home to the Old Galveston Club occupies part of a larger two-story brick building that once stretched across what are today three addresses: 414-418 21st Street. Built in 1890 by Josephine Ada Coghlan (1845-1925), a single woman determined to create a reliable source of income, the structure reflected both ambition and modernity. 

 Born in Mississippi, Coghlan arrived in Galveston with her family just before the Civil War and quickly established herself as a property owner. When the building was completed, she lived upstairs alongside her tenants, renting the ground floor to a rotation of small businesses. 

 The second story featured nine plastered rooms arranged along a central hallway, with double rear galleries overlooking the narrow alley. The building was outfitted for both electricity and gas - an impressive feature for its time. 

 

 Coghlan’s investment soon paid off. Financially secure, she moved to a home at 1805 Avenue K, while the property continued to attract commercial tenants. 

 In 1893, Louis Guttmann opened the Famous Dry Goods and Shoe Store on the ground floor, occupying the entire first level from 414 to 418. The business thrived, allowing Guttmann to purchase a home on Postoffice Street before relocating his store to Market Street in 1899. 

 Upstairs, the rooms served a steady rotation of tenants who used the spaces for both business and living quarters. Among the earliest were widow Josephine Baxter, who offered dressmaking services, and photographer F. W. Voorhies, who lived and worked at the 418 address. 

 Over the next several years, an eclectic mix of occupants passed through the 418 section. A group of four nurses shared rooms there; former Confederate officer Sydney Thurston Fontaine maintained his law office; and Oliver H. de Lamorton operated his “French system of dress cutting” business while residing on site. 

 Musician Edgar A. Rogers, co proprietor of the Rogers Brothers Orchestra with his brother William, also lived in an upstairs apartment while the brothers kept their office at the nearby Grand Opera House. 

 Families made their homes there as well. Conrad and Emily Eissenmayer lived and worked at 418, operating his life-insurance agency, Skidmore & Eissenmayer, alongside her hairdressing and manicure salon for ladies from 1896 to 1900. 

 During the same period, widow Jodie T. Courtney lived upstairs with her sons, supporting the family as a dressmaker. Her boys worked around the corner at the Hotel Grand - Arthur as a bell boy and Fletcher as a waiter. 

 After the 1900 Storm, the building’s three sections appear to have been permanently divided into separate addresses, likely following minor repairs. Around the same time, the property was purchased by Richard Ivey, a successful mattress manufacturer, as an investment. 

 In 1901 and 1902, photographer Frederick E. Trube operated his studio upstairs, where he remained for five years, capturing countless portraits of Galvestonians and visiting travelers. He shared the second floor with barber Charles F. Brenner. 

 On the ground floor, Benno Engelke’s Racket Store moved in, offering a little of everything customers might need. A “racket store” was the early equivalent of what would later become a five-and-dime. 

 Another long-term tenant was Christian Baumann, a German immigrant and tailor who also provided cleaning, dyeing, and repair services. Baumann, who served as pastor of the German Spiritualist Temple, took over a space previously occupied by ladies’ tailor Abraham Buchwald. His business remained at this location for more than twenty years. 

 Beyond these regular tenants, the building saw a steady turnover of boarders and small businesses. Over the years, occupants included the Eugene Frasch & Co. cigar factory, the Albert Hoppe Saloon, sign painter Otto Spangenberg, and a rotating cast of cooks, mechanics, chauffeurs, shop workers, and laborers. 

 

 In 1906, Eugene Gehret opened his barbershop and bathing rooms on the first floor, becoming one of the building’s longest-standing tenants. 

 Renovations continued in 1907, when the second floor was reconfigured into sixteen rooms arranged along two hallways. The number of rooms suggests that, although the ground-floor spaces had been divided into separate storefronts, the upstairs may still have functioned as a single, contiguous floor of small apartments. 

 From 1908 to 1910, widowed dressmaker Ida Lawson served as landlady for the furnished apartments, living on site with her two sons. She was followed by another widow, Minnie Lawshae, who managed the rooms for the next two years while raising her two young sons with the help of a servant. Most of her seven boarders worked at a nearby laundry company. 

 In 1913 and 1914, Lizzie Green Schaer took over as landlady. Recently widowed - her husband had died in December 1912 - she relied on the apartments for both income and housing for herself, her daughter Marsaline, and her son Joseph. 

 Marsaline was well known in the community as a talented singer and had even performed at the opening ceremonies of the famed Electric Park on the seawall in 1907. 

 Although the rooming house never appears to have been officially named the Cadillac Hotel, proprietress Augusta Schmidt adopted the name in her 1915 advertisements - likely borrowing the luxury associated with the popular touring cars of the era. During her brief tenure, rooms rented for $4 per week. 

 A familiar face returned in 1916 when Marsaline, now married to Fred Schehin, assumed her mother’s former role as landlady. The upstairs rooms - freshly painted and papered - had increased to eighteen, and were advertised as available “cheap to good tenants.” The monthly rate was $35. 

 On the first floor, long-time tenants Christian Baumann and Eugene Gehret remained in place. Gehret had recently renamed his business Gehret’s Opera House Barber Shop, reflecting its proximity to the Grand Opera House and its growing reputation. 

 The most dramatic transformation at 418 21st Street came in 1924. After a full renovation, the first floor became the new entrance and lobby for the Martini family’s State Theater, which now occupied the remodeled Grand Opera House building. Theater management offices were also located on the first floor. 

 

 The second floor was reconfigured as well and reopened as the Page Hotel, operated by Miss Josie Page, a divorcée from Louisiana. She offered furnished rooms to “employed ladies or gentlemen.” 

 Page had previously run the Palm House Hotel, owned by Harry A. English, who - along with his wife and four children - had once lived at 418 21st. 

 During the renovation, the narrow half-alley between the original building and the opera house was enclosed to create a new entrance into what is now the opera’s grand foyer. 

 The outline of the staircase that once led from this entrance into the theater is still visible today on the back right-side wall of the Old Galveston Club. Tenants of the hotel apartments accessed their rooms through a door to the left of the theater lobby. 

 Insurance records from that year note a cut-through on the south side of the downstairs wall - approximately sixteen feet wide and ten yards back from the entrance - roughly where the faint outline of the former staircase can still be seen. 

 In 1953, the State Theater frequently ran newspaper advertisements seeking after-school help, looking for “neat appearing” applicants to work as candy girls and boy ushers. 

 By 1957, insurance documents note that the opening where the interior staircase once connected 418 21st to the theater was filled in with hollow tile to match the original wall thickness, effectively separating the two structures. 

 Afterward, the space cycled through a series of tenants - a pawn shop, an insurance agency, a jewelry store, and Main Sales & Loans, another pawn shop in 1959 - before taking on a new identity in the late 1960s as the Saratoga Club. 

 The club served as the meeting place for Saratoga Tribe No. 29 of the Improved Order of Red Men, a fraternal and patriotic organization. 

 Their gatherings weren’t strictly formal. Records show the club was raided at least twice for illegal gambling and serving alcohol after hours, suggesting that meetings occasionally extended beyond official business. 

 The space took a brief break from tavern life in 1992, when the Shamrock Variety convenience store operated there, though it closed the following year. 

 In 1994, Rosita “Rosie” Requez Calibuso opened Rosie’s Offshore Bar in the building and purchased the property three years later. Calibuso, who immigrated from the Philippines in 1980, had previously owned the East House Restaurant - located where the Old Quarter Acoustic Café now stands one block over at 413 20th Street - and was well known in the community for her intelligence, generosity, and warm presence. 

 She later renamed the business Rosie’s Bar and Lounge, but the establishment was forced to close after sustaining damage during Hurricane Ike in 2008. It reopened in 2010 as Rosie’s Old Entrance, a name chosen to honor the building’s long history, and became known for hosting live Sunday jam sessions. 

 In 2016, the bar reopened as The Wine Next Door under new owners David and Holly Baze. The couple sold the business to Eric Aldis in 2019, who renamed it The Old Galveston Club in tribute to the iconic island bar that once stood in what is now the parking lot behind The Grand 1894 Opera House. 

 A lawsuit filed by the Bazes over issues related to the property eventually made its way to court, and ownership was transferred to Beau Rawlins. Rawlins continued operating the establishment under the Old Galveston Club name, preserving the connection to the beloved original venue demolished in 1993. 

 Luci White Smithhart, the current owner of the bar, finds the building’s layered history endlessly fascinating. She happily points out the hints of its earlier lives - the “ghost outline” of the old stairway, the exposed brick walls, the coved ceiling, and even a fragment of a column near the entrance. 

 “I bought this from Beau Rawlins as the Old Galveston Club on December 29, 2023,” Smithhart shares. “When I first came in, it was a little different… a little smoky and dark.” 

 Since then, she has transformed the space into an inviting gathering spot - and made it a family affair. 

 “It’s my bar, but it’s family-run. My daughter and grandson are my bartenders, and my 87-year-old father has his TABC license. He’s the fourth bartender.” 

 The back portion of the building that once housed theater offices now serves as liquor storage, and the stairs and doors that once connected the opera house to the bar have long since disappeared. 

 Upstairs, the former apartments - now divided among the building’s three original addresses - survive only as a cramped storage area accessible through a small hatch in the rear hallway. 

 Traces of the past linger upstairs: patches of original plaster clinging to brick walls, an oddly blocked-off space along the front wall, the broken wooden frame of what may have been a closet, and the remnants of old ceiling fans. Windowless and airless, the space is no longer fit for living; it is steamy, claustrophobic, and frozen in time. 

 Smithhart prefers not to venture up there, admitting that the space is “creepy, and not just because it’s dirty.” Fortunately, her grandson is more than willing to climb up when something needs to be stored or retrieved. 

 Though the upstairs no longer bustles with tenants, tradespeople, and families as it once did, the downstairs has entered what may be the most welcoming chapter in the building’s long history. Today, it offers a place to gather, talk, and - if the mood strikes - reflect on the many lives lived within these walls. 

 Beyond pouring drinks, Smithhart pours her warmth into every corner of the new Old Galveston Club. “I love this community and just love all my locals,” she says, a sentiment that now defines the spirit of the space far more than any of its former incarnations.