Ghost of the Tiffany Room – Lightner Museum – St. Augustine Florida
I froze in my tracks, chilled by the hostile presence I could feel behind me. A blanket of silence fell over the room. The dappled, dancing colors of the stained glass windows stopped in their motion on the walls. People entering the room stood still. I slowly turned around to see what had woken me up. I did not see anything. The presence remained. I narrowed my eyes, trying to pierce the veil that prevented me from seeing anything. An image of an angry woman approaching seventy formed in my mind. Her dark hair pulled back in a bun at the back of her head was streaked with gray. She was wearing a patterned dress that reached well below her knee. Her black fleece sweater was open. Her eyes flashed with anger as she ordered me out of the room.
On my first visit to the Lighter Museum in 1977, I slowly made my way through the rooms and exhibits. Numbed by a constant avalanche of uniqueness and beauty, it took Tiffany’s room to wake me up a little more. “These items were made by the same hands as Louis Comfort Tiffany,” I remember thinking.
In the center of the room, a large chandelier hung within my reach. In years past, artists have told me that the mark of a genuine masterpiece is the compulsion the viewer feels to touch it. This cut glass lampshade was indeed a masterpiece and I felt that compulsion. I approached in silence. Pausing in front of it for a few seconds to admire the beauty up close, it occurred to me that there might be an alarm system and if I touched it, the bells and whistles might ring and bring security to the museum. I still wanted to touch it. Raising my hand in defiance of the possible consequences, I extended my index finger and very gently touched a cut-glass Tiffany chandelier.
At exactly that moment, the hostile presence became known right behind me.
Thirty years passed without me giving much thought to that experience. Eventually I went to work for Historic Tours of America. The company wanted me to check out all the historical attractions before joining full time, so I visited the Lightner Museum again. This time I moved more slowly, probably because in my thirty years at St. Augustine, I had learned more about Otto Lightner and his contemporaries than I did on my first visit. Much of what I saw this time brought to mind stories I’ve heard and articles I’ve read. I remember seeing a room dedicated to Musical Machines, on my first visit.
One of Otto Lightner’s collections were machines that can play musical instruments. On my first visit I missed the concert (11am and 2pm daily). This time, the concert was just beginning when I entered that room. In the early 1900s, people were getting more and more excited about MACHINES. They built mechanical devices to do things unimaginable in the past and this room loudly echoes that emotion in a collection of intelligence and creativity that form an art form of their own. One machine even plays a violin. There are several street organs and pianos, including a barrel organ. Machines were in fashion.
An adjoining room on the first floor displays two working glass-blown steam engines; the very essence of the era of industry turned into art. An early “word processor” (an antique typewriter) is displayed in that room right next to seashells and Indian spears. Otto Lightner’s passion was collecting. His wife probably said, “She just never throws anything away.” His button collection is upstairs with cut glass and crystal. He collected beautiful marble ladies, elaborate furniture, and unusual dishes. The list is endless.
Lighter made his fortune in the Hobbies magazine business, championing the hobby of collecting. He traveled the world doing his own shopping. He was an avid collector of collections and opened a museum to house them. A visitor will find everything from toasters to Tiffanies, from Steins to Steinways. He even collected an Egyptian mummy. That probably also has a ghost associated with it. The Lightner Museum is quite a place, but the most spectacular historical artifact is the building itself, a tribute to the imagination of Henry Morrison Flagler. From its landscaped courtyard to its marble-appointed steam room, The Alcazar Hotel is an architectural statement about beauty, luxury and indulgence.
The pool fascinates me even more than the shower with the sixteen spray heads. The roof of the pool, four stories above the water, was once able to open up to the sky. Vast decks wrapped around the pool on the upper floors, looking down on swimmers in one of the largest indoor pools of its day, fifty feet wide and thirty feet long. Seeing the room that houses the pool tantalizes the imagination. The room is cavernous. Tents line the sides of the pool. The Café Alcazar serves lunch in the background, but the ghosts are still there. Even if you can’t see them, you can feel them echoing through the silence of that great hall. I wonder if Henry Flagler is upset that his swimming pool is being turned into a theater, and if Richard Boone regrets the decision to engineer that change. Gone are the days when children plunged each other into that water with the echoes of Beethoven from the orchestra above, while their parents dancing in formal attire watched over them, far below.
My visits to Hotel Alcázar always include time in the pool and reflecting on the grandeur of those past spring nights. As I wander through the building, I try to imagine what it must have been like as a hotel. On this last visit, I wandered and reflected as before, but to my surprise, I had a jarring memory of my first arrival at the Museum.
After visiting the gym, Lightner’s dining room, and cut glass creations, I finally made it to the Tiffany Room. It had been many years since my last trip to see the actual museum exhibits. The slightly darkened room allowed the colors of Tiffany’s wonderful creations to stand out in the sunlight streaming through the window. It took my eyes a moment to adjust, and when they did, the first thing I saw was the Tiffany chandelier. I leaned closer to get a better look and felt the same compulsion I felt the first time I was there. I wanted to touch it. The same thoughts occurred as before: what if there is an alarm system? This must be quite valuable. I didn’t want to cause a stir or get in trouble, but still. I wanted to touch it. I reached up, extended my index finger, and touched a real Tiffany creation. The ghost was still there.
I went back to the Lightner Museum today to get photos specifically to photograph that Tiffany Chandelier for this article. I was expecting to find orbs in a lot of the photos, since a lot of people in St. Augustine talk about how haunted that building is. I really wanted to know if the ghost was still there.
Not only was the ghost not there, the chandelier was not there either. I went to a museum assistant and asked about the chandelier and was told to go to the desk downstairs and ask there. The person I spoke to at the desk had been working at the Lightner Museum for decades. When I asked about the chandelier, she replied, “What chandelier?”
I asked if the exhibit had been changed in recent years and was told that the Tiffany exhibit had not been changed or altered in any way in over forty years. I walked away shaking my head. Not only was there no candlestick, there had never been a candlestick.
When I got home I called the person who accompanied me on my last visit and he confirmed that we had seen a chandelier and that I was not losing my mind. The experience left me somewhat bewildered. I’m not used to ghosts messing with my senses like this.