MUSEUM & CULTURE
Lightner Museum
St. Johns County · Atlantic Coast
Three floors of Gilded Age collections inside Henry Flagler's 1887 Alcazar Hotel, with a cafe in the drained swimming pool.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
Flagler commissioned the Alcazar Hotel in 1887 to hold the overflow of wealthy visitors coming south on his railway. Carrere and Hastings designed it in Spanish Renaissance Revival style and built it of poured concrete, which made it among the earliest poured concrete buildings anywhere. Otto C. Lightner, a Chicago publisher who collected the collections of others, bought the building on August 20, 1947, filled it with what he had gathered, and gave it to the City of St. Augustine. The museum opened in 1948. The first floor holds a Victorian science and industry room of shells, minerals, stuffed birds and mechanical musical instruments from the 1870s to the 1920s. The second holds cut glass, art glass and Tiffany work. The third holds paintings, sculpture and furniture around the ballroom balcony. The indoor swimming pool, once the largest in the world, was drained and is now the Cafe Alcazar. City hall occupies the other wing
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