"The Mystery of the Crystal Chandeliers"

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This mystery of the missing crystal chandeliers...

might be like any mystery that would catch the fancy of any historian or genealogist. Researching the past starts as a great mystery or a story to be solved. Some time back on this blog I reported on the fabulous Crystal Room of the Acme Hotel and its beautiful crystal chandeliers. I photographed the two chandeliers that are in the C. K. Newsome Community Center. During my research I learned that there were four chandeliers, but I had only found two. So, the mystery was: where were the other two? What happened to them? Asking around about the other two, most said that they only knew of the two (that I photographed). I was simply amazed when one day at the Community Center as I was going downstairs to the Evansville City Parks & Recreation Department offices, right in front of my eyes above the midway landing hung chandelier #3. I had seen it many more times than I had looked at the others! I decided to look all through the Community Center... looking in every room.

But, alas, that fourth chandelier was not to be found anywhere. I gave up assuming that it might have been broken or, as people often say, "it sprouted wings and flew off." This past weekend, Becky & I spent some time visiting zoos and museums. At the Evansville Museum, I found that chandelier #4. I recognized it immediately, excitedly telling Becky that it was the "missing" chandelier from the Acme Hotel! There was a little sign indicating that it was indeed the fourth chandelier from the Hotel with the other three at the Community Center. Finally, the little mystery of the crystal chandeliers was resolved and this historian/genealogist can relax until the next mystery case evolves!

- Photo taken & submitted by JGWest. Blog written by JGWest.

"From a Jewelry Store and a Hotel..."

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From the past we save some elegance & beauty...

Evansville's Artes Jewelry Store & the Acme Hotel gave some of their greatest fixtures to the Evansville C.K. Newsome Community Center: a world award winning bar plus crystal chandeliers from around the world. From a newspaper story, I found this concerning the bar ~

Spirits of the Past
Ornate bars of Evansville are an elegant toast to the city's history
By SARA ANNE CORRIGAN Courier & Press correspondent
Posted December 5, 2007
Although not in use as a center for serving of alcoholic or other beverages anymore, there is a beautiful old canopied bar with beveled mirrors and massive carvings on the front columns installed in a banquet/meeting room at the C.K. Newsome Community Center on Walnut Street at Heidelbach Avenue. It is strikingly out of place in the contemporary structure that replaces an earlier community center at Eight and Main streets, which was razed to make way for the Civic Center Complex. That building had an earlier life as a CE&I Railroad depot; the columns that make up the centerpiece of the Four Freedoms monument on Evansville’s riverfront were also salvaged when that building was razed. But the bar, according to Dan Kollker, was moved there from an even older and long-since forgotten venue, the Acme Hotel, in Downtown Evansville.
Here is the bar at the Community Center. Click on photos to enlarge images.

The east end corner column topped with a hand-carved lion's head with close-up below.

Click on photos to enlarge the images.

Here is the East corner of the bar showing the marble hand rail.

View of the back side of the bar.

Close-up view of the bar.

These two photos highlight the crystal chandeliers.

From other news accounts, I discovered the following ~

Built about 1866 at 22 NW 2nd. St. near the Old U.S. Custom House & Post Office building, the Acme Hotel stood on the Southwest side of 2nd. Street between Sycamore & Main. The hotel was closed 25 July 1956 & razed in August 1956. The hotel, once one of Evansville's finest, was known up & down the Ohio valley for its cuisine. One news report stated that travelers considered there was no finer place to eat on the river and no finer wine cellar. The bar room with its cut-glass crystal chandeliers became known as the Acme Crystal Room and for a few years considered Evansville's most popular beverage spot. The chandeliers were part of the original Artes jewelry store which had imported them from Czechoslovakia made for the Palace of Versailles. Each chandelier contains 1200 prisms and more than a score of light connections.
The old oaken relic bar with its beveled glass canopy (193 mirrors), is said to have won a prize at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893 as the finest bar on exhibit. Made in Italy, it features hand-carved lions heads at the top of each end. Twelve feet tall and thirty foot long, the bar has a marble hand rail and brass foot rail. The hotel was torn down & replaced by a hard-surfaced parking lot.

- Photos taken & submitted by JGWest. Article compiled by JGWest