golden gate | Jacqui Thurlow-Lippisch

Golden Gate Building, 3225 Dixie Highway, Stuart, FL 34997

May is Historic Preservation Month and 2025 is Martin County’s Centennial!

For my entire life has stood “that building.” A building that somehow looks so out of place, like it’s going to fall into the road, the Golden Gate Building. When I was a kid growing up in Stuart, it was always in disrepair, paint peeling, balcony falling, beaconing of better times, long, long ago.

But it has been reborn….

In 2006, it was added to the Martin County Historic Register, and in 2017, it was listed on the Nation Register of Historic Places. For many years grassroots organizer, Saadia Tsafarides, has been leading the charge for the neighborhood through “Friends of Golden Gate” and this year she will be awarded the “Preservationist of the Year,” for her longstanding, and outstanding work for Golden Gate. Congratulations Saadia!

But what about the ghosts of this building? It has to have some. To begin with, I will only speak about a few.

Photograph of the building in 1982, the year I graduated from MCHS.

Golden Gate Building is a parallelogram rather than a rectangle:

As many of you know, my mother is the “History Lady,” so I ended up learning more than the average person about this building.

In my opinion, its roots can be traced back to Sewall’s Point’s namesake, Captain Henry Sewall, and the infamous adventurer, Hugh L. Willoughby, who also lived in Sewall’s Point. Around 1910, these two gentlemen founded Sewall’s Point Land Company and the development of Port Sewall. You may have noticed the historic markers for Port Sewall near the Martin County Golf Course or “Sailfish Sands” on St. Lucie Boulevard? Port Sewall encompasses today’s Golden Gate.

In the beginning it was a fancy place. Willoughby hired an architect to design the St. Lucie River Club Golf Course (1924); the developers had the beautiful Sunrise Inn on Old St. Lucie Boulevard constructed and eventually many wealthy northerns enjoyed yachting in the waters of the St. Lucie River. In 1892, men and a raccoon had dug an “inlet to the sea,” also backed by Captain Henry Sewall. After many successes with his Hanson Grant lands, Sewall died in 1925, at the age of 76.

The year Captian Sewall died was an electric one…

The year 1925 was around the height of Florida’s intoxicating land boom and developers were making money hand over foot. In 1925 Martin County was formed from parts of Palm Beach and St. Lucie County “in honor” of Governor John Martin; and by this time, some of the lands of Port Sewall were being sold by the Golden Gate Company led by president, G.W. Bingham. And in 1925, as a hub for the selling of those lands, the Golden Gate Building was errected.

A South Florida Developer newspaper article states that in 1925 the Golden Gate Company was offering the Martin County Commission a spot for the court house. Politics and carrots, things never change!

The tremendous element that had been driving the dream of Golden Gate was the dream of a great port at the southern tip of Sewall’s Point and the completion of the St. Lucie Canal in 1924. WATER.

Well as we know, dreams do not always come true. Although Golden Gate had hefty sales, in 1926 the Great Miami Hurricane destroyed much of developed South Florida; in 1928 another horrific hurricane killed over 3000 people farming south and around Lake Okeechobee; and the 1929 Great Depression brought all things dreamy to a halt, not just in Florida, but in the county.

So the world came crashing down and there the Golden Gate Building stood, and stood, and stood and was empty and sometimes filled as different things to different people. It has been standing for 100 years!

Recently, I attended a lecture at Indian River State College that my mother gave to students. Her theme was “Martin County’s Centennial.” At this lecture, I met student Connor Larson and he shared with me a logo he had submitted for Martin County’s centennial. It features the Golden Gate Building cradled by Sail Fish, the symbol of Martin County. I fell in love with this image and I sharing it below.

Logo for MC’s 100 year anniversary, Connor Larson, IRSC.

Connor grew up in Martin County and graduated from Jensen Beach High School and like those who wanted to live in Port Sewall 100 years ago, loves the water and fishing.

I felt really honored to meet Connor as history will not continue to be celebrated unless we have young people interested in history. This May, for Historic Preservation Month, I am going to work with Connor to get more young people involved!

Like keeping our waters clean, it cannot be accomplished without the help and interest of the next generation. Thank you Connor for your interest in history and congratulations on your awesome logo! Let’s keep the Golden Gate Building standing another 100 years!

Connor Larson with a giant snook in the St. Lucie River

Golden Gate 1954 US1 and Dixie (Photo courtesy of Sandra Henderson Thurlow) — Historic aerial of Port Sewall’s Golden Gate area in 1954, US1 and Dixie in foreground. (Photo courtesy of historian, Sandra Henderson Thurlow)

If you ever drive the easterly location of Indian Street in Martin County, you are in the historic subdivision for the proposed Town of Port Sewall. According to the “History of Martin County,” in 1910, Hugh Willoughby and Captain Henry Sewall established the Sewall’s Point Land Company which developed Port Sewall–of which Golden Gate is part.

I was taken by these old aerials from 1954 showing the straight roads of the Golden Gate section of the development with Sewall’s Point and St Lucie Inlet in the distance; I wanted to compare the photo to a cool old plat map and a Google map of today.

I love this old area of Martin County. So much history. It is fun to drive along Old St Lucie Boulevard and through Golden Gate. There are still remnants of the past. To visit the old Golden Gate building on Dixie Highway now getting a new life as the office of House of Hope—that was once a real estate office…..an awesome old Whiticar Boatworks from a bit later…

One of the long forgotten thing about this area is that Sewall and Willoughby’s vision for this development was a deepwater port off of Sewall’s Point. According to historian Sandra Thurlow, “The port was to be established at the junction of the waterways known today as the Crossroads. It would be called “Port Santa Lucia” and would handle the vast amounts of produce that would be shipped out of the interior of Florida via the cross state canal.”

The cross-state canal in this reference? Yes, the cross state canal of the 1920s was the dreaded St Lucie Canal or more lovingly know today as C-44…the canal that connects Lake Okeechobee to the St Lucie River/Indian River Lagoon.

Willoughby and Sewall’s development and the Port of Santa Lucia never succeeded as the Great Depression of the 1920s killed that dream. But unfortunately part of the dream of that era lived on. Today the cross state canal or since named “Okeechobee Waterway” (C-44 in Martin County) does not transport vast amounts of fresh produce, but rather is used to “manage” the waters of Lake Okeechobee and to send sediment and nutrient filled Agricultural run off to feed algae blooms and destroy the property values of Sewall’s Point, Port Sewall, Golden Gate, and the rest of Martin County.