In 1903 the Palacios townsite company arranged with the Southern Pacific Railroad to extend its line to the new city, and the first train arrived on June 29 bringing prospective settlers from Midwestern states. In June 1904 the company began construction of a pavilion on the South Bay, designed by Victoria architect Jules Leffland and built on a pier extending 400 feet into the bay. Called the Pleasure Pavilion, it consisted of a central round two-story open-air pavilion with boat docks and bathers' dressing rooms extending along the pier. It quickly became the social center of the town, offering swimming, boating, dancing, skating, and basketball games. After sustaining hurricane damage in 1915, 1919, and 1934, it was razed in 1935 under the direction of a local seawall commission and with funding from the Federal Public Works Administration, and was replaced with a new pavilion called the roundhouse. The roundhouse continued as the focal point of community activities, especially during the war year of the 1940's and the early 1950's, until Hurricane Carla destroyed it in 1961, after which the city eventually erected a smaller open-air pavilion in its place.