A New Year's Eve Splash!
Lightner Museum - Not the Same Old Story
As you would expect, St. Augustine’s Lightner Museum is a quiet place. For visitors, the experience of coming into close contact with artifacts attesting to the heyday of America’s Gilded Age is one that is almost silently reverential. What a difference 100 years have made!
Prior to becoming the Lightner Museum in 1948, this building was the Alcazar Hotel, built by Henry Flagler and opened to his guests in 1888. The Alcazar offered a lively and often noisy alternative to Flagler’s magnificent and formal Ponce de Leon Hotel located just across the street. Business tycoons and royalty came to the Alcazar for fun at its bowling alley, archery range, steam baths, cinema and perhaps most appealingly, its huge indoor swimming pool – one of the largest in the world at the time.
Long-since drained, the pool today is the location of antique shops and a place where diners can sit at tables in what was formerly the pool’s deep end. Until the Alcazar closed in 1931, the waters of the deep end were the setting for an unforgettable New Year’s Eve tradition. At the stroke of midnight, dashing young men attending the hotel’s annual ball and dressed in their finest tuxedos, top hats and tails would dive headlong into the pool – some from an overlooking balcony or from a rope swing. Accompanied by the orchestra’s rendition of Auld Lang Syne and the cheers and laughter of female spectators, the “performance” of the elegantly-clad divers was a major topic of conversation for both participants and onlookers for weeks to come into the New Year.
Prior to becoming the Lightner Museum in 1948, this building was the Alcazar Hotel, built by Henry Flagler and opened to his guests in 1888. The Alcazar offered a lively and often noisy alternative to Flagler’s magnificent and formal Ponce de Leon Hotel located just across the street. Business tycoons and royalty came to the Alcazar for fun at its bowling alley, archery range, steam baths, cinema and perhaps most appealingly, its huge indoor swimming pool – one of the largest in the world at the time.
Long-since drained, the pool today is the location of antique shops and a place where diners can sit at tables in what was formerly the pool’s deep end. Until the Alcazar closed in 1931, the waters of the deep end were the setting for an unforgettable New Year’s Eve tradition. At the stroke of midnight, dashing young men attending the hotel’s annual ball and dressed in their finest tuxedos, top hats and tails would dive headlong into the pool – some from an overlooking balcony or from a rope swing. Accompanied by the orchestra’s rendition of Auld Lang Syne and the cheers and laughter of female spectators, the “performance” of the elegantly-clad divers was a major topic of conversation for both participants and onlookers for weeks to come into the New Year.
Copyright 2012 St. Augustine, Ponte Vedra, & The Beaches Visitors and Convention Bureau |