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Top hats and bustles were de rigeur throughout the historic district. From a British jokester and juggler on Old Galveston Square to a costume contest judged by Galveston’s own “Queen Victoria,” bagpipes on the Tall Ship Elissa and camel and elephant and pony rides over on 21st Street, the festivities had a decidedly 18th century British feel.

Traditional Texas festival fare was generously sprinkled with European offerings like Scandanavian glogg (warm spiced red wine) and Scottish eggs (wrapped in sausage and fried), candied apples and cakes and breads and pastries.

Jack King surveyed the crowd from behind the colorful taffy collection at the back of La King’s Confectionary, which has become an institution on the Strand after 33 years. Like most of the 19th Century buildings in this historic district, his had to be completely gutted and rebuilt, from the floors to the staircases. The place has an old-timey feel, though, and it’s hard to imagine these pine-wood floors and wrought-iron railings are anything but old.

King reminsiced about his first Dickens on the Strand back in 1976, just three years after the festival had begun. “That year it was so cold the doors froze shut,” he said. This year the chill in the air was just enough to lend an air of festivity, but the confectionary was filled with revelers seeking warmth and a cup of hot chocolate, a candied apple or a sample of his handcrafted candies.

This year the festival filled 10 square blocks including Ship’s Mechanic Row and Strand streets, home to one of the country’s largest collections of iron-front commercial buildings. Those ornate ironworks were already showing their age, however, when Hurricane Ike sped up the deterioration with its salty waters. This year Galveston made the Most Endangered Places list of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and fundraising efforts for restoration projects like the 1878 First National Bank Building are underway. For more information about that project, see The Galveston Arts Center website, and for Galveston’s historic preservation efforts in general, see the Galveston Historical Foundation.

The festival began in the dark days of the Strand, when the Galveston Historical Foundation was casting about for ways to rebuild a decaying treasure. The first few years, lifelong Galvestonian Christine Hopkins told me, the festival was held only at night, when the festive lighting cast the shabby Victorian buildings at their romantic best.

Eventually, a multimillion-dollar restoration brought the charming historic downtown to life, but the city took another big hit last year when Ike deposited eight feet of floodwaters in the streets of downtown.

Nonetheless, Galvestonians being the hardy lot they are, the town has rallied impressively. A visit a few weeks ago with my daughter showed just how far the city’s come.

Here’s a little glimpse of a sunny day a couple of weeks ago.

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Construction crews are a common sight throughout Galveston.

It’s been only seven months since the third worst storm in the nation’s history walloped this small island city, leaving smelly water standing chest-high in the grand centenary Tremont Hotel, the colorful Victorian-style homes and the historic Strand district. Signs of the devastation are everywhere, from the blown-off front of a hotel to the leafless live oaks lining Seawall Boulevard.

Just this week, the National Trust for Historic Places named Galveston’s Historic Strand District one of America’s Most Endangered Places. It seems the cast iron frames supporting one of the largest historic commercial districts in the nation were already vulnerable due to the corrosive influence of the salty, humid air. The onslaught of Ike and the subsequent flooding of the area has placed the structures in imminent danger of collapse, according to the group’s preservation experts.

But just as surely are the signs of renewal: scaffolding and new siding going up on a beach house, a new fence around a newly rehabbed Victorian, a new cafe on the Strand, a new pier going up where The Balinese Room and Murdoch’s once jutted out into the Gulf. Fresh paint is everywhere; the painted ladies on Post Office Street practically jump up onto the sidewalk with their vivacious yellows and blues and pinks. And the beach, which had been scraped away by the force of the waves, is back; a beach reconstruction or “nourishment project” was completed along three quarters of the Gulf Coast before taking a break for the nesting season of the endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtles who make their homes here.

RoShelle Gaskins, the city’s tourism coordinator, takes us on an upbeat city tour, starting us out along the Seawall. This 10.5-mile barrier is home to the nation’s largest sidewalk, she informs me. More importantly, it protects the city from the vicious wall of water that a hurricane can bring. It was built by the survivors of the devastating 1900 hurricane that nearly wiped Galveston off the map, and it saved the island from this one. That hurricane, which killed over 6,000 people, is still on the books as the worst natural disaster in the country’s history. But even as devastating a blow as that one couldn’t keep Galvestonians down. So it was a foregone conclusion that Ike wouldn’t, either.

“We love this place; we’re connected to it,” explained Gaskins. “We don’t mind having to pick ourselves up again. It’s just a part of life.”

Still, the storm’s impact weighs heavily on the city’s residents. And it hurts to consider how much less national attention Galveston has received than post-Katrina New Orleans, where church groups, volunteers and celebrities flocked to lend a hand. Some volunteers have come to help out with the rebuilding effort, but nothing on the scale of New Orleans. Former presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush have raised $2.2 million to help with the coastal recovery efforts since Ike, just a tiny fraction of the $130 million they raised after Katrina.

“People keep asking us, ‘Why don’t you call some celebrities?’ We have – but they don’t respond. They don’t want the burden of having to respond to every storm now.”

She’d had her hopes pinned on Houston native Beyonce, whose family hails from Galveston. But her sole benefit concert benefited only Houston.

There’s another factor, too, she added. The same week that Ike battered the Gulf coast, the nation’s first black candidate was chosen to lead the Democratic ticket, and the biggest bank bailout in the nation’s history took place.

Meanwhile, Galveston rolled up its sleeves and got to work. “We didn’t sit there and cry; we just got up and did what we had to do.”