By now, Melbourne’s historic downtown has become just that – history – for many visitors from Vero, who make the trek up only to discover the district has little new to offer and little to do but drink, when there’s always that long drive home.
Just a bit further up U.S. 1, though, is another neighborhood, Eau Gallie. Remade and revitalized, now designated as Melbourne’s Arts District, it has turned a crime-ridden area into a charming neighborhood of Victorian homes, galleries, shops and the renovated and renamed Foosaner Museum of Art.
Like Vero’s downtown, Eau Gallie may be sleepy by day, roused mostly by the rush hour traffic to and from the barrier island on a causeway that divides at the mainland into one-way streets – also like Vero’s downtown.
And like Vero, Eau Gallie owes much of its recent revival to its First Friday strolls, when music spills out of the band shell into the town square, galleries stay open later and even the museum gets into the act, extending its hours and often hosting live jazz.
Many Vero residents first learned of the Foosaner Art Museum when a sign popped up on I-95 at the Eau Gallie Blvd. exit. Anyone who visited the museum in decades past may remember driving through dicey areas and arriving at a less-than-appealing venue, particularly when it was combined with a science museum, and an overwhelming mustiness pervaded the meager offerings.
That has all changed. A redevelopment project won a national award in 2003, and the area was officially declared Melbourne’s Arts District. An “arts overlay” was created to allow for studios and offices within homes.
Now a half-dozen art galleries plus an art supply store have opened, as well as a number of antique shops.
There is a microbrewery, Intracoastal Brewing Company. Pints go for $5, including one called Porter Canaveral. Last month it hosted a Bacon Beer Release Bash, with a pig roast food truck and a bluegrass band.
On Sundays, the brewery doubles as a yoga studio. An antique store recently held an evening book signing. And the Derek Gores Gallery, multitasks as an improv academy, led by comedians with the Not Quite Right Improv Troupe.
On First Fridays of the month, galleries and shops stay open late with special offerings. Live music spills out from the band shell into the square. And the Foosaner extends its hours, often with a jazz concert inside.
Founded in 1869 as a separate town from Melbourne, Eau Gallie very nearly became the home of the University of Florida. The site was approved by the state legislature in 1872, and construction was underway when five years later, politics intervened and the site was changed to Lake City, near Gainesville.
Later, Zora Neale Hurston, the African American author and linguist, made it her home, living their twice in her lifetime – once in the late 1920s, and again in the 1950s.
But when Eau Gallie merged with Melbourne in 1969, it lost its identity, planners say. The district that today appears to have retained its distinctive character in fact, was nearly destroyed by an epidemic of crime, drugs and prostitution in the 1980s and into the ‘90s.
Though the worst of its run-down buildings were torn down in the rehabilitation, Eau Gallie held on to dozens of handsome commercial buildings in brick and stucco dating from the turn of the last century, and a bevy of Victorian homes on the district’s outskirts. Other, more modern homes lines the Indian River Lagoon.
There is a distinctly old Florida feel to the bars and restaurants, and they make up in charm what they may lack in sophistication. There is Squid Lips, whose southerly location on Sebastian’s riverfront is well known in Vero. And six months ago, a friendly Italian restaurant, Chef Mario’s, opened in a beautiful old bank building, vaults still intact.
Rounding out the Americana ambiance, there’s a pie shop, a cake shop, and an Ace Hardware. There is also a fishing pier, and a public library.
The Brevard Symphony Orchestra has its main office in Eau Gallie, in a home built in 1886.
Anchoring the district is the Foosaner, an attractive yet unimposing space recently placed under the auspices of Florida Institute of Technology (under the same direction as the Ruth Funk Textile Museum, on the Florida Tech campus.)
The Foosaner has gone through a number of incarnations, merging at one point with a small science museum. By 2011, it had been radically renovated and transformed, boosted by the $1 million gift of its new namesake and longtime supporter, Cocoa Beach philanthropist Samuel Foosaner.
Today it draws 16,000 annual visitors, a tally expected to rise this coming season with an exhibition opening in January of more than 50 photographic portraits of the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, taken by her longtime lover Nikolaus Muray. It is the only museum in Florida to feature the exhibition.
“The Foosaner Foundation gift enabled us to renovate not only the physical structure of the museum – and thus increase our visual appeal to the community – but it allowed us to raise the level of our exhibitions and programs and extend the academic outreach of Florida Institute of Technology,” says Carla Funk, director of exhibitions for the university.
Funk calls the museum “the epicenter of the Eau Gallie Arts District.”
Founded in 1978, the museum has grown to a 28,000-square-foot complex that includes an auditorium and an education building. It has amassed a collection of 5,000 objects, most of it modern or contemporary; it boasts the largest collection in the world of the early 20th century German painter Ernst Oppler.
Last week, a dozen children from the Foosaner summer arts camp sat cross-legged on the floor in the cool, dim main gallery, studiously copying works of art from the current exhibition: “Infinite Mirror: Images of American Identity.”
The engaging collection of works by 39 artists of differing heritage was curated by Blake Bradford, the education director of the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia.
While Vero’s far grander art museum similarly dedicates its main gallery to an exhibit for both adults and children this summer, with the wonders of Walter Wick’s assemblages and photography for his “I Spy” books, a scenic drive north offers a more serious exhibit, equally appropriate for families.
To help with bearings: The Eau Gallie Causeway, which runs through the Eau Gallie district, spans the Indian River Lagoon to Indian Harbour Beach, just before a spit of land slices off the eastern part of the lagoon, forming the Banana River.
Once on the barrier island, it is just over a half-hour’s drive down A1A to the Sebastian Inlet in Indian River County.
The Foosaner Art Museum is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays and Saturday, with hours extended on Thursdays until 7 p.m. Sunday hours are 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, go to www.foosanderartmuseum.org, or www.eaugalliearts.com.
