Elliott Museum

Sterling Elliott invented things: a quadricycle, the knot-tying machine, the addressing machine that printed the labels on magazines. His son built a museum in his name on Hutchinson Island in 1961, and the county replaced it in 2013 with the glass and stone building that stands across the road from Stuart Beach today. Inside, the collection is wide and cheerfully unrelated: antique cars on a three-storey rack that a robot pulls down on request, wooden boats, a baseball gallery, a general store and the history of the island and its river.

The car collection is the draw. More than fifty vehicles sit in a racking system behind glass, and a visitor picks one from a screen and watches it delivered to the turntable. The Florida Oceanographic Coastal Center is next door, the beach is across the road and the three together make a full day.

The museum is air-conditioned, flat and friendly to strollers and wheelchairs, which makes it the coast’s best answer to a rainy afternoon or a midday heat you cannot face. Give the general store exhibit ten minutes; it is the one grown-ups linger in.

Good to know

• The car rack is the thing children remember; ask the attendant to pull one.
• Combined tickets with the House of Refuge are sold at both.
• Allow two hours; three with the Coastal Center next door.
• The lot is shared with the beach and fills on winter weekends.
• The café is small; lunch is at the beach across the road.