Sunday, December 29, 2002
By JAY CLARKE
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
STUART, Fla. -- Once you get past Confusion Corner, it's smooth sailing in this Atlantic Coast city.
At one time, this five-street downtown Stuart intersection was a traffic nightmare. But a calming island and one-way thoroughfares have tamed the vehicular frenzy of this otherwise-cozy corner.
Best thing to do is ease through the intersection and head over a block to inspect the pleasant array of boutiques, shops and cafes found on Osceola Street, and recall Florida as it once was.
First thing you'll come upon is the Ashley restaurant, named for a notorious band of Florida outlaws. Back in the 1930s, the building was occupied by the Stuart Bank, a tempting target for the Ashley Gang, which robbed it twice.
You can learn the details in photos and clippings mounted on the walls and even embedded under plastic in the tabletops of the recently renovated restaurant.
Then there's the Lyric Theater, a lovely survivor from Florida's 1920s boom days. Today, it's a small but elegant venue for plays, movies, concerts and other performances. Coming in January: Jackie Mason. (For schedule of events: www.lyrictheatre.com.)
Down the block, you may try to bypass Kilwin's, but chances are you won't be able to resist this candy-and-ice cream haven's aromatic assortment of chocolate creations and frozen fantasies.
Osceola Street also is home to a quartet of downtown Stuart's most tempting restaurants -- David's, T.A. Verns, Gusto and the Sailor Pub (which transforms itself into the Queen's Grill promptly at 4:30 p.m.).
Alternatively, step onto the riverside boardwalk a few yards away and stroll over to the Black Marlin and Dockside, two restaurants that offer fine views of the broad St. Lucie River.
Nearby site
The St. Lucie is one of two major waterways that separate landside Stuart from the beaches of Hutchinson Island. The other is the Indian River, and between the two lies Sewall's Point, a lush residential area that also is home to another celebrated restaurant, the Dolphin.
Owned by one of Stuart's most distinguished resident, singer Frances Langford, the restaurant's walls are laden with memorabilia from her show-business career -- photos of her with Bob Hope, from the mid-20th century days when she was a regular on his radio and TV shows. The food's good, too.
Most visitors to Stuart stay on Hutchinson Island, a thin oceanside strip that, thankfully, has managed to keep a low profile. By law, no buildings higher than four stories can mar the Martin County landscape.
(You can tell instantly when you enter adjacent St. Lucie County by the phalanx of high-rise condos that suddenly rises above the beach.)
One of the most popular pied-a-terres on Hutchinson is the 290-room Marriott Beach Resort (formerly the Indian River Plantation), a delightful domicile for both couples and families.
On its 200 acres, this big spread offers all manner of activities, from 13 tennis courts and an 18-hole executive golf course to a choice of four swimming pools, a beach or the popular Pirates Castaway Weekend for kids.
Nearby is one of the area's most interesting strands, Bathtub Beach. A favorite with local families, it is so named because of its calm waters and is hemmed in by an unusual, close-in reef constructed by worms.
You read it right, worms -- but not the slimy, wiggly things you may be imagining. Like coral, these Sabellariid worms are seagoing creatures that build structures as hard as rock.
Worth the look
On this southern shore of the island are two other sites worth visiting. One is the House of Refuge, one of the last surviving stations in what once was a series of shore installations maintained by the U.S. Life-Saving Service, predecessor to the U.S. Coast Guard.
The House of Refuge was built in 1876 to keep watch on the sea traffic offshore and to rescue shipwrecked sailors whose vessels had run afoul of treacherous Gilbert's Bar reef. The station soon had business galore, its men kept busy hauling survivors to safety with breeches buoy and other devices.
With the coming of powered ships and more sophisticated navigation equipment, the lifesaving stations were phased out. During World War II, the one here became a lookout for German U-boats that preyed on Allied shipping in the Gulf Stream, which is relatively close to shore here. In the postwar years, the surviving buildings of the old station were transformed into a museum.
Here you also stand on one of Florida's most unusual shores. The coast is not sloping and sandy, as is true most elsewhere in Florida, but lined with jagged rock upthrusts perhaps 10 feet high. Looking on these small cliffs and the weathered old lifesaving station beyond, you might feel as if you were in New England.
Florida it is, though, and, a little further north on the coast, you'll come upon two other unusual facilities, the Elliott Museum and the Florida Oceanographic Coastal Center.
In a small town like Stuart, you don't expect to find a museum of the quality of the Elliott. Founded in 1960 by Harmon P. Elliott to honor his father, turn-of-the-century inventor Sterling Elliott, it displays local history in a series of dioramas.
Included are such diverse elements as an old-time country store, a 1928 dining room with furniture that once belonged to silent-movie star Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and the largest collection of baseball autographs not in the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
But the highlight is a wonderful gathering of antique cars, all beautifully maintained and nearly all driveable -- and actually driven, on special occasions.
"It's this wing of the museum that tugs at people the most," curator Susan Duncan deadpans.
Across the street, the Florida Oceanographic Coastal Center gives some pretty good tugs to youngsters. There, they can stroke stingrays and fondle hermit crabs in a touch tank, make animal tracks in sand, put together manatee puzzles and skip down a nature trail.
Nuclear encounter
Further up the coast, you'll find another attraction that appeals to kids and adults as well. It's the Energy Encounter, a free, multiroom display at Florida Power and Light's nuclear power plant, just a few miles north on State Road A1A.
One exhibit lets visitors become control-room operators of a simulated nuclear-power plant. Another uses descending balls in a roller-coaster-like display to illustrate energy transfer.
"Kids like that one the best," says Vicki Spencer, director of the facility, which gets 35,000 visitors a year.
Outside, on the shores of the Indian River, FPL maintains the Marine Lifetrack tank, where kids can touch sea animals. And, across the highway on the ocean side, visitors can stroll the Turtle Beach Nature Trail, a boardwalk about three-quarters of a mile long.
Sport fishing and boating are major activities in this part of Florida. Stuart prides itself as "the sailfish capital of the world," though snook fishing is just as rewarding. You can charter a boat at any of a number of marinas, or bring your own, up the Intracoastal Waterway.
And, finally, if your getaway includes a time slot for shopping, check out the Treasure Coast Mall. It shelters a million square feet of stores anchored by Burdines, Dillard's, J.C. Penney and Sears.
Or you can visit the popular B & amp;A Flea Market, which is open Saturdays and Sundays. But in season, be there by 10 a.m., or you won't get in.