St. Augustine in northern Florida, the oldest town in the United States, officially dates back to the year 1565. That was when Spanish conquerors defeated French Huguenots to control this strategic point on the Atlantic Ocean. In St. Augustine you can still admire the massive Castillo de San Marcos, built by the Spanish in 1672. In the old town centre, many streets are still named after cities in Spain. You can learn about pirates, soldiers and the colonial history of Florida in the town’s many museums.
tourist development
One of the main attractions of St. Augustine is the Lightner Museum, which tells of another fascinating period in American history: the Gilded Age. During the Gilded Age, which lasted from the late 1860s into the first decades of the 20th century, wealthy industrialists and their families discovered Florida was a paradise for winter vacations. New railroad lines opened up Florida for development and tourism for the first time. Until then, the state had been a wild place of swamps and forests where indigenous peoples such as the Seminoles still lived.
memorabilia
The Lightner Museum is housed in a spectacular Spanish Renaissance Revival-style building that dates from 1888. Its galleries display all sorts of collections, mainly from the 19th century: of paintings and furniture, of porcelain, pottery, and travel souvenirs. Visitors can also admire collections of interesting memorabilia that you don’t usually see in museums: toasters, matchboxes, hair combs and much more. There is an unusual collection of buttons, some cut like jewels, others hand-painted or covered with lace. A collection of cigar labels brings to mind images of elegant gentlemen smoking in clubs or at parties, while discussing big business.
EXQUISITE LUXURY
A special gallery contains a glowing wall, window panels and lamps in stained-glass created by the famous American glass designer Louis Comfort Tiffany or other artists. Another highlight of the museum is its sparkling collection of American cut glass and lead crystal that includes vases, bowls, a seven-foot amber glass lamp and an exquisite punchbowl four meters wide.
A FORMER CASINO
The Lightner Museum building was once the casino of the Alcazar Hotel, which was built in 1888. At the height of the Gilded Age, especially in the 1890s, hotel guests could dance and sip champagne in a beautiful ballroom on the top floor. From there they could lean over balconies to watch bathers below in what was, at that time, the world’s biggest indoor swimming pool. They could also enjoy a bowling alley, fitness rooms, tennis courts, and the hotel’s own Bicycle Academy, where they could learn and practice a new and very popular sport: cycling. They could also relax in a steam room known as the Russian Bath or have a sauna in the Turkish Bath.
THE GREAT DEPRESSION
After decades of glamour and success, the Alcazar Hotel declined in popularity as rich people discovered new, even more luxurious resorts further down the Florida coast. After the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and during the Great Depression, many fortunes were lost. Few people could still afford luxurious vacations. The Alcazar Hotel finally closed in 1932 and stood empty for many years.
MR. OTTO LIGHTNER
Up north in Chicago, however, the publisher Otto Lightner earned plenty of money by selling something that most people could or still wanted to buy: magazines. As other publishers and businessmen went bankrupt, Mr. Lightner, a passionate hobby collector, bought their businesses and mansions and the beautiful things in them. Mr. Lightner was rich, but he was also sick with cancer. He discovered the abandoned Alcazar Hotel while he was staying in St. Augustine to rest and recover from medical treatments. This would be the perfect place to exhibit his collections, he thought. He bought the hotel buildings and opened the museum in 1948, just two years before his death.
The indoor swimming pool is now gone, but weddings and receptions still take place in the dramatic space where it once was. Outside, there is still a lush garden of palm trees, reflecting pools and fountains. With its chandeliers, gleaming floors, arches and Grecian columns, the museum still evokes the elegance and opulence of the Gilded Age, a time when fortunes in America were made in railroads, manufacturing industries, oil and steel.”