Moody Mansion
building in Galveston, Galveston County, Texas
The Moody Mansion, also known as the Willis-Moody Mansion, is a historic residential building in Galveston, Texas located at 2618 Broadway Avenue. The thirty-one room Romanesque mansion was completed in 1895. The home is named for William Lewis Moody, Jr., an American financier and entrepreneur in the cotton business who bought the home from Galveston socialite Narcissa Willis. The mansion was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 13, 1994. Tours are offered, and the facilities can be rented out for weddings and other events.
Construction and history
The mansion was commissioned by Galveston socialite Narcissa Willis in 1893. Throughout her life, Willis had asked her husband, entrepreneur and cotton broker Richard S. Willis, to build a grand home. Willis demurred as he preferred to keep his assets liquid to be distributed among his ten children on his death. After Richard Willis' died in 1892, Narcissa had the home she and her husband shared torn down and began plans to build a more opulent home on the site. For this act, Willis was estranged from her family until her death in 1899.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Moody Mansion” as building in Galveston, Galveston County, Texas. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the places & architecture register because the source frames it as building in Galveston, Galveston County, Texas. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16895349. Authority coordinates are 29.299, -94.796. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1895, 1994, 1893 and 1892.
Modern boundaries and familiar names can conceal earlier jurisdictions or structures that do not align with the present site. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
- Jurisdictional context
- Routes into maps and plans
Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Moody Mansion”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Moody Mansion primary sources, Moody Mansion archive and Moody research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Moody Mansion”?
- What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
- Which authority defined the place, boundary or structure at the relevant date?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Moody Mansion” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.