We journeyed into St Augustine for the last day today. We had some loose ends that we wanted to see and we wanted to walk around the town once more. So much nicer than walking in the park although the park has a delightful path around the outside edge through a forest area that someone diligently mows. They call it a dog run but it is really nice for a daily walk and I’ve never seen anyone with a dog anywhere near it.
We began with breakfast out - at a new restaurant. And, I go back to the old adage - if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Marvelous breakfast last week, marginal this week. The eggs were ok - how can you mess up scrambled eggs? The biscuit was sliced in half and fried in some grease. Ummm. Slid down well but the taste didn’t. I like hash browns that are crispy on the outside but potatoey on the inside. These were heavy on the crispy and very light on the potatoey and fried in the same foul grease that the biscuits were. Not a place I’d go back to.
But the rest of the day was great: we saw two museums that we hadn’t been able to get into and a new one that wasn’t even on my list.
One of the first places we visited was a place we had visited before but had been kicked out at 4:30 when it closed. Funny thing, on their front door, in large white letters, facing out for everyone to read, it said that they closed at 5:00. Looks like someone wanted to leave early. We had gotten there at 3:30 and, had we known that they closed at 4:30, we never would have started. But the gentleman today let us in with our old receipt and we were off to see the first floor since we had already seen the top two floors.
Well, this floor was worth the price of admission in itself. First we got a 45-minute history lesson, product description and concert of the many mechanical musical instruments they have in the museum. And what a concert it was. The docent moved from piece to piece telling a bit about the history, the price, the usage of each of these instruments and then she cranked them up and the belted out their tunes.
This neat one actually had a disc changer. Press a button and a new disc came up to play. Of course, those discs were plenty large.
My favorite was the violin playing one. Unfortunately, it was broken and she couldn’t play it.
The docent began with the history of the Lightner Museum. It began as a second building built by Henry Flagler across the street from the Ponce de Leon Hotel. Called the Hotel Alcazar, the rooms were secondary to the entertainment function of the building. Here is where the residents of the Ponce came to be entertained and to spend their leisure time. Here was a steam room, a massage parlor, sulfur baths, gymnasium, a tennis court, a bowling alley, a 3-story ballroom and the world’s largest indoor swimming pool. The pool was filled in long ago but the ballroom has been refurbished to its former glory, note the polished wood floors. John Phillip Sousa played here for Flagler. It is said that Flagler was very deaf and Sousa played very loud - perfect match.
The Great Depression sealed the fate of the Alcazar and it closed in 1932. The story now switches to a newspaper publisher and owner from Chicago, Otto Lightner. He owned quite a few newspapers but it was his penny magazines that brought him to the Alcazar. Entertainment was pretty rare during the Depression - no one could afford it. But penny magazines were cheap enough that many could still afford them as the only entertainment they had. Lightner’s most popular magazine was one called ‘Hobbies’ where he espoused the idea that everyone could have a hobby - how about collecting buttons? cigar bands? match books? marbles? Cheap and entertaining - they filled the bill.
Here’s my favorite: a toaster collection.
Lightner himself was a collector and had quite a few things in his collections. in fact, he opened his house to others to see his collections. Then he bought the mansion next door so he could fill it with more of his collections for people to see. Well, you can see where this is going - he needed a much larger space to display all he had. In the meantime he had come down to spend some time in St Augustine at the Ponce and noticed the building across the street. Aha.
And he bought it in 1936 to display his collections and those of others who had heeded his call to collect. He opened it in 1938 but, poor man, he died in 1940, before he had really had a chance to enjoy his new building.
The building is now owned by the city of St Augustine and is on the National Register of Historic Places. The rooms have been restored to their original beauty but now contain Lightner’s collections. Oh, yeah, in the depths of the depression, Lightner began to buy up the furnishings in the mansions of those who did not survive the Depression and much of that is in the Lightner Museum also. Thus the Lightner Museum is not just a collection of collections, it is also a museum of early 19th Century furnishings. There is a room devoted to Tiffany stained glass, Victorian art glass, paintings from around the world and much more.
But, lets get back to the concert of the amazing mechanical instruments. I know you’ve heard of paper piano rolls for a player piano. Well, here’s a book-like rolls. Very rare and they searched the world for someone to make a new one to replace the one they had that had torn. Found a guy in Holland who finished this last one before he died of cancer. What a sad story.
Lightner is buried in the courtyard of his museum so we can all pay our respects to him for building this amazing museum.
Here’s one last picture from the Lightner, a 5’ x 3.5’ hooked rug expressing someone’s delicate feelings about family gatherings. Did this person put this out as a ‘Welcome’ mat before Thanksgiving?
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