I had a day to spend in St. Augustine so I headed for the Lightner Museum. Mr. Lightner was a newspaper man from Chicago who thought up the idea of selling advertising in newspapers. He made a lot of money and when the stock market crashed in 1929 he bought up artwork and other collectibles from the bankrupt tycoons of the age. He bought entire estates for next to nothing and stripped out the goodies and sold the rest. He couldn't find a big enough place for all his stuff so he went to St. Augustine and bought a defunct hotel which was the former Hotel Alcazar (first photo) which was built in 1887.
The hotel was built by railroad magnate Henry M. Flagler who built the Alcazar and the Ponce de Leon Hotel (second photo) which is now a college. The Hotel Alcazar became the Lightner Museum when he suddenly dropped dead in 1950 and the city took over as trusties.
It is an amazing collection of costumes, furnishings, mechanical musical instruments and other artifacts. The Lightner collection includes beautiful examples of cut glass, Victorian art glass and the stained glass work of Louis Comfort Tiffany. Many of the musical machines still work and the staff will play them for you. There are many pieces of hand carved furnishings and original paintings. The tycoons of the early industrial age spent money and time scouring the world for beautiful stuff so they could "out do" their fellow tycoons. 
Who says the rich don't share? A lot of people get to see the thing they will never have a chance to own thanks to this guy. Thanks for the nice picture of the boat, we saw a lot yachts on the ICW when we were in Fort Lauderdale. The water taxi narrator said there was a lot of nothing in places coming down from Boston and Maine. Some peoples nothing is another person’s beauty. He made the trip twice a year so I suppose the wonder wears off after awhile. Kind of like the Minnesota winters by late April the winter wonderland has wore pretty thin.
ReplyDeleteJohn