Stuart Heritage Museum

The red wooden building at the river end of Flagler Avenue opened in 1901 as the George W. Parks General Merchandise store and spent most of the century as Stuart Feed Supply, which is still the name painted on the front. It is the oldest commercial building in town and the Stuart Heritage society has filled it with the town’s past: the pharmacy counter from the old drugstore, the switchboard, fishing tackle from the sailfish years, photographs of the river before the bridges and a wall of the families whose names are on the streets.

It is free, it takes half an hour, and the volunteers who run it have usually lived here long enough to add the stories the labels leave out. Ask about the 1928 hurricane, the pineapple trade and the train.

The museum sits at the junction of the Riverwalk and Flagler Avenue, so it fits between a walk along the river and a coffee downtown without any planning. The building itself is the exhibit as much as anything in it: heart-pine floors, a pressed-tin ceiling and the loading dock on the river where the feed arrived by boat.

Good to know

• Free, with a donation box by the door.
• Half an hour is enough; an hour if you get a volunteer talking.
• Open daily, but the hours are short; mornings are safest.
• The Riverwalk begins at the back door.
• The gift counter sells the society’s local history books.