A Collection of Collections - Lightner's Museum: St. Augustine, Florida

"A Collection of Collections - Lightner's Museum: St. Augustine, Florida"

One of my favorite attractions in St. Augustine is the Lightner Museum.I found a good article in the World Golf Village Community Journal that I am going to write about and pull some facts and excerpts from. The original author was Eileen Fuld.

The Museum is a Spanish renaissance style building which houses a collection of Victorian Artifacts.The Lightner Museum, formerly the Hotel Alcazar, was commissioned in 1887 by railroad magnate Henry Flagler. He built both The Alcazar and the Ponce de Leon Hotel which is presently known as Flagler College.

The Alcazar Hotel opened on December 25th, 1888. A room for the night was $2.00. By the 1930's the price had gone to $5.00 per night. If you were a "Big Spender" you could stay at the Ponce de Leon Hotel for $20.00 per night.

The Alcazar was actually built to provide Amenities for it's more expensive sister hotel "The Ponce". Amenities such as a grand ballroom, a massage parlor,, a steam room, a gymnasium, sulfur baths, grass tennis courts, outside bicycle paths, as well as the world's largest indoor swimming pool at that time. There was an underground passage connecting the two hotels. Both hotels are also two of the earliest poured concrete buildings in the world.

The indoor pool was 120' long and 50' wide. The third floor gallery overlooked the pool. In 1947 the pool was covered with a floor and used for antique shows, home shows and even theatre presentations. Today the floor is gone and the pool bottom is home to a restaurant.

In 1946, Chicago publisher, Otto Lightner came to St. Augustine to recuperate from an illness. While staying at the Ponce he discovered the closed Alcazar. Being an avid collector he decided the Alcazar would be a perfect home for his different collections. In 1948 he paid $125,000 for the hotel and the city added another $25,000 to the package. In exchange he donated the building and his collections to the city as a museum which opened originally as the "Lightner Museum of Hobbies". Otto Lightner died in 1950 from lymphatic lung cancer.

Anyone visiting St. Augustine should take the time to visit.