According to family legend, upon giving birth to the couple's fifth child in 1885, Magnolia Sealy told her husband, leading Galveston businessman George Sealy, that she would bear him a second son if he built her the finest home in the city. Reality or not, the following year, Magnolia traveled to New York and enlisted the services of McKim, Mead, and White. Construction of the neo-Renaissance home, believed to be the only building in the South designed by nationally renowned architect Stanford White, ran from 1887 to 1889. Architect Nicholas Clayton—responsible for many of the public, commercial, and residential buildings in Galveston—served as supervisor of the project as well as designed a carriage house, on which construction finished in 1891. Home to one of Galveston's most prominent families, Open Gates quickly became a center of commercial and social life. In 1900, the mansion also served as an emergency shelter, protecting as many as 400 people seeking refuge from the great hurricane. The Sealy family conveyed the furnished mansion to the University of Texas Medical Branch in 1979. The building is now known as the Open Gates Conference Center. 

Touted as the precursor to the Miss Universe Pageant and a Galveston tradition from 1920 to 1932, the Bathing Girl Revue (later known as the International Pageant of Pulchritude) signaled the beginning of the summer tourist season. To strengthen its tourism industry following the devastating Hurricane of 1900, the city of Galveston looked to organize regular waterfront events. In 1920, local promoter C. E. Barfield established the annual Splash Day event, with the Bathing Girl Revue competition as its main attraction. By 1926, the revue became an international contest known as the Pageant of Pulchritude. The following year, the event was split into two separate contests held over two days, awarding the title of "Miss United States" and "Miss Universe." At its height, the pageant attracted so many spectators that it tripled the island's population during the weekend when it ran. Galveston stopped hosting the Pageant of Pulchritude after the 1931 event as a result of the Great Depression. Aside from a pair of contests held in Belgium in the 1930s, international beauty competitions were discontinued until 1952, when the modern Miss Universe contest began in California.