Lofts tour showcases island-style urban living Inside this home you'll find treasures of a Renaissance man

A long hallway serves as a showcase for Budelmann's art and artifacts. A long hallway serves as a showcase for Budelmann's art and artifacts. Photo: Steve Gonzales, Houston Chronicle Photo: Steve Gonzales, Houston Chronicle Image 1 of / 30 Caption Close Lofts tour showcases island-style urban living 1 / 30 Back to Gallery

For 30 years, Ulli Budelmann studied cephalopods -- octopus, squid and cuttlefish -- as a professor and researcher at UTMB in Galveston. His goal was to learn what he could of their sensory organs for application in treatments for balance and equilibrium issues.

Sound like a nerd? Maybe.

The reality though, is that Budelmann, a native of Germany, is a Renaissance man. He's earned a living through neuroscience and neurobiology, but has delved deeply into art, nature, history and many other things.

His downtown Galveston loft is one of nine open to the public on April 29 for the Downtown Galveston Lofts Tour. It showcases the unique spaces created when older buildings once used for commercial purposes are renovated into residential space.

"It's a broad collection," says Trey Click, executive director of Galveston's Historic Downtown Partnership. The longtime tour had been suspended after Hurricane Ike and this year's is the third since its revival.

"It does better and better every year," Click says. "We're trying to find homes that represent living in an urban environment. They're all in old buildings. The lofts all represent the repurposing of what was old architecture."

Budelmann has lived in his roomy Market Street loft since 2009. Before then he lived in a home on a bayou, where he got regular exercise gardening and doing yardwork and he had space for woodworking.

He had many antiques and artifacts, paintings and other works of art, 3,000 books and collections of all kinds of other things.

Galveston Lofts Tour When: 10 a.m.-4 p.m. April 29

Where: check in at Edna's Room at 2020 Postoffice starting at 9 a.m. on day of tour for list of tour sites.

Tickets: $30 in advance, $35 on tour day; go to www.downtowngalveston.org

Preview Party: 6-8 p.m. on April 28; $50 ticket includes admission to April 29 tour.

Information: www.downtowngalveston.org or call 409-789-9820

He makes his own jam, built his dining room table, created a unique "floating" wine rack and filled a long hallway with groups of shells, rocks, fossils, spheres and other trinkets. Never mind that his living room furniture includes an ordinary tan sofa and loveseat ... that's not what you're there to see.

You're here to look at a 2,000-year-old Grecian urn that once likely held wine or olive oil or the ornate German chest that came from Budelmann's family and was made in 1810, more than 200 years ago.

There are wood carvings from Africa and elsewhere, and Mayan artifacts, too. He still visits Europe, and finds things everywhere he looks.

"I spend so much time in England and in Italy, those countries are full of antiques," he says. "I started collecting when I was a student and had no money. Go to junk places. You always find something and you buy it and don't eat for a day or two."