Millions of people visit Colonial Williamsburg each year. I first went there when I was nine or ten and fell in love with the place.
I can trace my love of early American history to that visit. I took my own children there several times. The last time I was there was a decade ago, and I still enjoyed the experience. I noticed they were playing the same film on their informational television station that I had watched as a kid almost 60 years ago.
Nearby Jamestown, settled in 1607, was the first permanent English settlement in North America. It remained the capital of Virginia until the statehouse burned in 1698. The College of William & Mary and other residents of what was then known as the Middle Plantation asked that the capital be moved there.
The Middle Plantation was renamed Williamsburg and became the colonial head of government, remaining Virginia’s capital throughout the period. Governor Thomas Jefferson moved the capital to Richmond in 1780 to avoid English attacks and to be more centrally located to the western counties. Williamsburg became nothing more than a college town, and for the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was a sleepy backwater and fell into ruin.
The City of Stuart was settled in the late 19th century and incorporated in 1914, which predates the creation of Martin County by more than a decade. For many years, Stuart was the population and business hub of the area. The railroad connected it to the rest of Florida, and the farming and fishing industries were integral to its growth.
Like Williamsburg after 1780, Stuart in the 1960s and 1970s began to decline into irrelevance because of suburbanization and the growth of alternative shopping options in Martin County. There was no longer a reason for the City to exist. The railroad ceased picking up passengers and the station was torn down. Downtown mom and pop stores were no longer needed with the growth of chains and big box stores.
Stuart fell into a miasmic state. It withered in its past. We weren’t southern enough to be like Faulkner’s fictional Jefferson nor were we cowboy enough to emulate McMurtry’s Anarene, Texas. We were a proud has-been farm town like so many others.
In the 1920s, Williamsburg had W.A.R. Goodwin to spearhead restoration, using the Rockefeller fortune to do so. For the decades since, Colonial Williamsburg recreated a town based on Tidewater life in the 18th century just before the Revolution. People from all over the world flock to experience and learn from the docents in period costume.
Stuart didn’t have Goodwin or Rockefeller, but it did have Peter and Joan Jefferson and a core group of others that began the rebirth of downtown and the historic preservation of many late 19th and early 20th century properties. Unlike Williamsburg, Stuart could not become a museum but needed to embrace commerce for economic survival.
Through the last two decades of the 20th century, Stuart saved its downtown. Retail stores catering to tourists were opened. Most new downtown restaurants were not accessible to the average Stuart resident because of price. Since economics needed to play a role in what was feasible, Stuart became a make-believe charming and historic downtown.
We saved the real estate for posterity but not with any real vitality. We made a small historic village next to City Hall but then, except for the Stuart Feed Store (Museum), they became rented offices. It cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to rescue questionable historical structures for what purpose? They are antiquated offices for politicians.
Martin County and Stuart recoil at any development. No old property should ever be torn down (historic or otherwise) in some people’s minds. The old Stuart High School building is a case in point. There is nothing architecturally unique inside or out. It is just a physically, economically, and functionally obsolete building. Yet it tugs at the heart because so many generations attended high school there. If the Arts Council gets its way, the “sick” property will remain off the tax rolls as its new home. It will not make way for new housing. No new families will be living there.
Are we using the term historic to mean that nothing should be changed? Every building, empty lot or current use must stay the same? In many minds, Martin County should be like an insect caught in a block of amber, frozen in time. We are Brigadoon without the sleep and striving to be Burroughs’ The Land That Time Forgot.
There is a price to pay for inertia. We are seeing it as Cleveland Clinic concentrates on expanding in St. Lucie County. Apparently, there are not enough babies being born to have even one private practice doing it in Martin. The hospital will, at great expense, continue obstetrics for the time being. Due to the expanding populations to our north and south, we will have less clout in Washington and Tallahassee after the next census as we become even more of an afterthought for electoral districts.
I have heard the word paradise used to describe our area. And that is an apt description if you are a senior like me, or someone that has an inheritance. For young people or families trying to make a living, it isn’t such a paradise. History teaches us that remaining in a cocoon is not beneficial for having a future.
Stuart and Martin County are not Colonial Williamsburg. Our history is similar to thousands of other former farm towns. Most of our architecture is anything but “historic.” An old family photo may be sentimental, but it probably isn’t historic. We should know and treasure our history. That is different from living in the past with a predilection to a no-change future.
