- Who: Local artist and muralist Christopher Vitale, working with the City of Stuart’s Mural Matching Grant Program.
- What: A 16-by-42-foot mural tracing a Downtown property from 1914 to the present, completed during the same year Downtown Stuart earned federal historic recognition.
- Where: Adjacent to the Old Colorado Inn in Downtown Stuart.
Downtown Stuart spent this summer getting something it had never had: federal recognition of its own history. On July 29, 2026, the National Park Service added both the Downtown Stuart Historic District and the East Stuart Historic District to the National Register of Historic Places.
A few months later, a mural went up Downtown that tells part of that same story on a wall.
What the Mural Shows
Christopher Vitale completed a 16-by-42-foot mural titled “The Old Colorado Inn: Then and Now” adjacent to the historic inn on October 6, according to an announcement from the artist. The roughly 672-square-foot work reads left to right across more than a century.
The left side renders the original Coventry Hotel in black and white, based on a 1920s postcard photograph of the property. A period automobile and a figure in era dress fill out the scene. Partway across, the painting shifts into full color and becomes the building as it stands today.
Vitale said the transition from black and white into color is meant to show the passage of time from Stuart’s founding to the present.
Why 1914 Matters
The Coventry Hotel opened in 1914. That is the same year Stuart was incorporated as a town, which puts the building’s origin at the start of the city’s own official history.
That overlap is part of what made the Downtown district eligible for the National Register. The Florida Department of State describes the district as the historic commercial and governmental core of Stuart, containing multiple city hall buildings and the historic Martin County Courthouse.
The East Stuart Historic District, listed the same day, comprises the core of the city’s historic Black community.
A Grant Program Behind the Paint
The project was funded in part through the City of Stuart’s Mural Matching Grant Program, which contributed $3,000 toward the work as part of a broader effort to expand public art in the city.
That program is the quieter piece of this story. It means murals Downtown are not purely private decoration but partly a civic investment, with the city sharing costs on works that go up on its streets.
Vitale began the mural in 2024 and finished it gradually over two years.
Not His First Wall
In 2021, Vitale painted a mural on the opposite side of the same building depicting the House of Refuge at Gilbert’s Bar, the oldest building in Martin County.
Taken together, the two walls function as a small outdoor history exhibit: one building that predates the county, and one property that dates to the town’s founding year, both rendered a few steps from the district that now carries a federal listing.
What the National Register Listing Does
Worth clarifying for property owners Downtown: listing on the National Register does not place restrictions on private property. The City of Stuart stated this directly when the designation was announced.
The Downtown nomination was made possible by a grant awarded to Stuart Main Street, which advanced the district through the review and nomination process alongside the Florida State Historic Preservation Office and the Florida National Register Review Board.
Florida now has more than 1,700 National Register listings, including 291 historic districts. As of this summer, two of them are in Stuart.
For more on Downtown Stuart and other historic places across the Treasure Coast, visit our things to do in Stuart guide.
