Lightner Museum
Encyclopedia
-
- For other uses see Alcazar Hotel
The Lightner Museum is a museum of antiquities, mostly American Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
, housed within a historic hotel building in downtown St. Augustine, Florida
St. Augustine, Florida
St. Augustine is a city in the northeast section of Florida and the county seat of St. Johns County, Florida, United States. Founded in 1565 by Spanish explorer and admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, it is the oldest continuously occupied European-established city and port in the continental United...
, USA
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. The building, in a Spanish Renaissance Revival
Architecture of the Spanish Renaissance
Renaissance architecture was that style of architecture which evolved firstly in Florence and then Rome and other parts of Italy as the result of Humanism and a revived interest in Classical architecture...
style, is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
.
The museum occupies three floors of the former Hotel Alcazar, commissioned by Henry M. Flagler to appeal to wealthy tourists who traveled there on his railroad, and built in 1887 in the Spanish Renaissance style. It was designed by architects Carrère and Hastings
Carrère and Hastings
Carrère and Hastings, the firm of John Merven Carrère and Thomas Hastings , located in New York City, was one of the outstanding Beaux-Arts architecture firms in the United States. The partnership operated from 1885 until 1911, when Carrère was killed in an automobile accident...
, who also designed the Ponce de León Hotel
Ponce de León Hotel
The Ponce de León Hotel was an exclusive hotel in St. Augustine, Florida, built by millionaire developer and Standard Oil co-founder Henry M. Flagler and completed in 1888. The Hotel Ponce de Leon was designed in the Spanish Renaissance style by the New York architects John Carrere and Thomas...
across the street (now part of Flagler College
Flagler College
Flagler College, is a private four-year liberal arts college in St. Augustine, Florida, USA and celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2008.The college has been named in recent years by US News & World Report as one of the southeast region's best comprehensive liberal arts colleges, and is included on...
). Both buildings are notable as being among the earliest examples of poured concrete buildings in the world. These architects later designed the New York Public Library
New York Public Library
The New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...
and the U.S. Senate office building.
The Alcazar Hotel site had previously been the bed of Maria Sanchez Creek, and to provide fill dirt to raise the creek bed, Flagler purchased a farm north of town and had his crews dig it up and move the earth downtown. The farm was the site of the first Fort Mose, the pioneer free black settlement dating back to 1738 that was the northern defense of St. Augustine and that is today recognized as a National Historic Landmark. Many of the archaeological remains of this first Fort Mose (which had been destroyed in 1740) are located underneath what is today the Lightner Museum and St. Augustine City Hall.
The hotel boasted a steam room, massage parlor, gymnasium, and sulfur baths, as well as the world's largest indoor swimming pool. However, after years as an elegant winter resort for wealthy patrons, the hotel closed in 1932. In 1946, Chicago publisher Otto C. Lightner purchased the building to house his extensive collection of Victoriana. He opened the museum two years later, and later donated it to the city of St. Augustine.
The building is an attraction in itself, centering on an open palm courtyard with an arched stone bridge spanning a fishpond. The Museum is housed in the former health facilities of the hotel, i.e, the spa and Turkish bath, as well as its three-storey ballroom.
The museum's first floor houses a Victorian village, with shop fronts representing emporia selling period wares; a Victorian Science and Industry Room displays shells, rocks, minerals, and Native American artifacts in beautiful turn-of-the-20th-century cases, as well as stuffed birds, a small Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
ian mummy
Mummy
A mummy is a body, human or animal, whose skin and organs have been preserved by either intentional or incidental exposure to chemicals, extreme coldness , very low humidity, or lack of air when bodies are submerged in bogs, so that the recovered body will not decay further if kept in cool and dry...
, model steam engine
Steam engine
A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid.Steam engines are external combustion engines, where the working fluid is separate from the combustion products. Non-combustion heat sources such as solar power, nuclear power or geothermal energy may be...
s, elaborate examples of Victorian glassblowing
Glassblowing
Glassblowing is a glassforming technique that involves inflating molten glass into a bubble, or parison, with the aid of a blowpipe, or blow tube...
, golden elephant bearing the world on its back, and a shrunken head
Shrunken head
A shrunken head is a severed and specially prepared human head that is used for trophy, ritual, or trade purposes.Headhunting occurred in many regions of the world. But the practice of headshrinking has only ever been recorded in the northwestern region of the Amazon rain forest...
; and a Music Room, filled with mechanized musical instruments—including player piano
Player piano
A player piano is a self-playing piano, containing a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism that operates the piano action via pre-programmed music perforated paper, or in rare instances, metallic rolls. The rise of the player piano grew with the rise of the mass-produced piano for the home in...
s, reproducing pianos, orchestrions, and others—dating from the 1870s through the 1920s.
The second floor contains examples of cut glass, Victorian art glass and stained glass work of Louis Comfort Tiffany
Louis Comfort Tiffany
Louis Comfort Tiffany was an American artist and designer who worked in the decorative arts and is best known for his work in stained glass. He is the American artist most associated with the Art Nouveau and Aesthetic movements...
's studio. The third floor, in the ballroom's upper balcony, exhibits paintings, sculpture, and furniture, include a grande escritoire
Desk
A desk is a furniture form and a class of table often used in a work or office setting for reading or writing on or using a computer. Desks often have one or more drawers to store office supplies and papers. Unlike a regular table, usually only one side of a desk is suitable to sit on . Not all...
created for Louis Bonaparte
Louis Bonaparte
Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, Prince Français, Comte de Saint-Leu , King of Holland , was the fifth surviving child and the fourth surviving son of Carlo Buonaparte and Letizia Ramolino...
, King of Holland
Kingdom of Holland
The Kingdom of Holland 1806–1810 was set up by Napoleon Bonaparte as a puppet kingdom for his third brother, Louis Bonaparte, in order to better control the Netherlands. The name of the leading province, Holland, was now taken for the whole country...
, in the period 1806-1810.