Stuart Heritage Museum

ABOUT THIS PLACE

George W. Parks built it and ran a grocery on the ground floor while living upstairs, which was the usual arrangement for a merchant in a river town of that period. From 1913 it was the Stuart Mercantile Company. By the 1960s it had become the Stuart Feed Store and it stayed a feed store until the building's history was formally recorded in 1989. The museum's collection runs from the 1880s to the 1950s, covering the pineapple growing that first brought money into this stretch of the coast, the railroad, the fishing, and the ordinary household and shop goods of the town, and the building itself is the largest object in it. In 2010 the museum acquired the Crary House, built in the 1920s, and had it moved onto the adjoining lot to be restored and brought into the museum. It is run by a local nonprofit and staffed by volunteers who will answer questions and explain what is on the shelves. It opens daily from ten in the morning until three and admission is free; the museum lives on donations, memberships and the gift shop, which sells among other things a DVD of Martin County history for a five dollar donation. On Wednesday mornings from ten until noon it holds the Old-Timers Social, refreshments and conversation with longtime residents of the town, which for anyone thinking of moving here is a more useful hour than any exhibit