Elliott Museum
Elliott Museum
4.5
10:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Monday
10:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Tuesday
10:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Wednesday
10:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Thursday
10:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Friday
10:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Saturday
10:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Sunday
10:00 AM - 5:00 PM
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See what travelers are saying
- bostonathonyWiscasset, Maine38 contributionsBest Transportation Museum in the countryOne of the best museums I have ever been to. The vintage cars , bikes etc were second to none. I have been to no less than 6 transportation museums across the country and this was the BEST. One of the highlights was the "auto elevator". You pick which car you would like to see and the automated system moves between three floors , grabs the car and brings it to the viewing area. AMAZINGVisited October 2023Traveled as a coupleWritten October 24, 2023
- Scott NSeven Points, Texas37 contributionsWonderful car museum and Fl historyOne for the best display of cars I have been to in FL. Friendly staff and very knowledgeable. There is a car vending machine. Unfortunately as we were checking in, the machine had an issue and was not able to function before we left. I will definitely be back the next time I am in Stuart. Can wait to see this machine operating!Visited November 2023Traveled with friendsWritten November 14, 2023
- Robert Martin115 contributionsGreat Museum, Great Area.Great Museum. They have everything you would expect for a museum. First they had a bunch of cars and a big machine that displayed them. They had some extremely old cars and newer ones too. Then they had some baseball stuff and then some really cool local exhibits. They also had signs saying that a new exhibit about ancient Egypt was coming for a limited time. Admission was reasonably priced. It is also in a good area and is right next to the Oceanographic Center and the Beach’s. It is also close to the House of Refuge historic site which I 100% recommended visiting in fact I even think there shuttles to there from the Museum. A must visit if you are in the area or traveling along highway A1A.Visited December 2023Traveled with familyWritten February 23, 2024
- The PidgeWayne, New Jersey609 contributionsBeautiful facility featuring a wide assortment of exhibitsInstead of focusing on one thing, the Elliott Museum likely has something for everyone (unless you're someone who has no interests whatsoever). Because of this, some of them were a "miss"- I didn't really connect with the featured King Tut exhibit because it was recreations instead of actual artifacts- but others were quite enjoyable. I particularly liked Wheels of Change, and wished I had been able to visit a few weeks later for a new one highlighting the career of Derek Jeter. A reason to return, no doubt.Visited February 2024Traveled soloWritten March 6, 2024
- LouBobHarborSpringsHarbor Springs, Michigan534 contributionsDelightful surprise!This was a delightful surprise. Having grown up in Detroit and having visited the huge Henry Ford Museum in nearby Dearborn, as well as automotive museums in other localities, I did not expect the automotive wing of this particular museum to be as complete and as enjoyable as it turned out to be. Additionally, the entire museum is small enough to not be overwhelming. Entrance fees are reasonable, staff is pleasant, and parking is free and convenient.Visited April 2024Traveled with familyWritten April 19, 2024
- Ward DSatellite Beach, Florida3,409 contributionsA lovely museum in Stuart, Florida.This is easy to get to as it is located on the south side of A1A where the road turns to the north and travels up the coast from the town of Stuart. It is a 2 story brick and glass structure. There is a small parking lot to the north and additional parking to the east of the building between it and the beach. The entrance is on the north side of the structure. You walk into a Foucalt pendulum on display. The counter where you can purchase tickets is to the right and the museum is to right and behind that. The staff was very friendly and helpful. Military are free and there are discounts for seniors. We got the combination ticket that allows you to see the museum and the nearby House of Refuge. The museum celebrates lots of celebrities and history that are unique to Stuart and the area to include Sterling Elliott. There are 2 stories of exhibits to include a very impressive historic car display, a baseball card display, Sterling Elliot exhibit and, when I visited, a King Tut exhibit. If you get the combination ticket, they will drive you to and from the House of Refuge. Overall, it was a very nice museum with a lot of fascinating local history and memorabilia.Visited May 2024Traveled as a coupleWritten May 21, 2024
- purplehorse13Chester Springs, Pennsylvania310 contributionsWorth A VisitI lived in Start from 1979-1985 and never visited the Elliot Museum! Why did I let this happen? Today my daughter and I on a sentimental visit to Stuart spend a couple of hours at the Elliot Museum. It was FANTASTIC! A varied exhibit with lots of Stuart area history too. Don’t pass this place by.Visited August 2024Traveled with friendsWritten August 16, 2024
These reviews are the subjective opinion of Tripadvisor members and not of TripAdvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews.
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Stephanie C V
Marlborough, MA4 contributions
Mar 2021
The staff was really friendly and knowledgeable about the cars they had on display. I would recommend this museum to people who are really into cars, they have a great selection to see. They also have art as well as signed baseball cards, and other things to look at which was cool and interesting.
Written March 25, 2021
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
marie s
Huntington, NY992 contributions
Jan 2020 • Couples
On a rainy not nice day (or a beautiful one) do stop in for a visit at the Elliott Museum. The exhibits change but some remain like the Langford exhibit, bicycles, cars and baseball cards. There is a lot of local history of the area plus a terrific docent when we visited. Spend some time here. Admission is $12.00 for seniors, $14.00 for adults...worth it!! A nice change of pace for visiting a beach resort in Florida.
Written January 11, 2020
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Randi H
Stuart, FL33 contributions
Aug 2020 • Family
When we went to the museum, they were having “mental health Monday’s” and it was a free admission day! They allowed us to use the admission we bought online for another day which was appreciated. We spent a lot of time here looking at all the cars, and especially watching the car elevator work, really awesome! The rooms down the hallways have lots of extra displays/exhibits, they have a great little gift shop, and it was fun to learn about the history of the area. When we went, it was very empty so we felt comfortable wearing our masks and meandering about. The museum also hosted a classic car show outside every week (Tue 5-8) as well so we attended that a few times also. The admission fee also allowed us to go to the House of Refuge/Gilbert’s Bar. Great places!
Written December 4, 2020
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
carpediemejc
Gainesville, FL171 contributions
Jul 2021
I recently spent about two hours exploring this museum. It was quirky with an unusual mix of items. It could best be described as either a museum of ingenuity or a museum of Americana. Elliott was an inventor and a collector. So, prototypes of his inventions are there, as well as some art, antique cars, a fully restored historic general store has been set up on the second floor, and there are antique baseball cards too. As I said, it is a quirky mix.
The best value is to buy the $18 combination ticket that will also get you access to the House of Refuge Museum, which is fascinating and located only one mile away.
The antique car elevator is not-to-be-missed. This was my husband's favorite part! They also have some rotating exhibits. Currently, one on the Seminoles is going up. There is also a miniature painting exhibit up right now that is amazing. There is a huge. free parking lot. There is also a cafe, but I did not try that during my visit. I would recommend this museum. It is a great way to kill a couple of hours.
The best value is to buy the $18 combination ticket that will also get you access to the House of Refuge Museum, which is fascinating and located only one mile away.
The antique car elevator is not-to-be-missed. This was my husband's favorite part! They also have some rotating exhibits. Currently, one on the Seminoles is going up. There is also a miniature painting exhibit up right now that is amazing. There is a huge. free parking lot. There is also a cafe, but I did not try that during my visit. I would recommend this museum. It is a great way to kill a couple of hours.
Written July 15, 2021
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
suewhitt15
Palm City, FL6 contributions
Sep 2021
The staff and volunteers at The Elliott Museum are absolutely the best. I held a special event there last week and everyone in attendance raved about the experience. Many had never visited the museum before. With the addition of Philly Down South Cafe, the food is excellent and gave me a turnkey special event that was exceptional. Upon arriving at the museum, we met a four-year old and his mom who were leaving the museum and the young man was bursting with excitement over his visit and asking his mother when he could come back.
Written October 8, 2021
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
piciii
Norfolk, VA13 contributions
Jan 2020
My wife and I decided to check out the museum based on recommendations of friends that had previously visited. We weren't disappointed. There is a great display of classic automobiles including what I can best describe as an outomobile vending machine where you select an auto to view closely and the machine gets it and brings it front and center for you to see up close. Then we saw a recent local exhibit of art focusing on women, followed by an extensive edisplay of artifacts illustrating the history of old florida. There is also a great exhibit of classic baseball cards to peruse.
Written January 26, 2020
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Homecroft56
Nineveh, IN487 contributions
Feb 2021
Stopped to see the old cars - they have quite a display of about 75 cars enclosed on a racking system. You can ask the volunteer (not wearing a mask) to push the button and bring the car you want to see down to the platform that rotates twice around. Only problem - you have to look through the glass to see it. We prefer being able to walk around the cars and look at them up close from all angles, like every other car museum. Nice place, but won't be back. We were there on a Tuesday afternoon and were surprised to learn they have a car show in the parking lot each Tuesday at 5 pm. You can walk around those cars!
Written March 15, 2021
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
scott r
Silver Spring, MD779 contributions
Dec 2022
Average to almost poor rating due to info desk lack of communication. They had a Staurday Evening Post cover exhibit. Would I like to see for extra charge? Sure. Not explained was the fact that you cannot photograph, period. Oh, signs are posted ONCE you get to the exhibit, but no one tells you this when you're spending the money at ticket counter. I would not have wasted the extra fee, as I cannot memorize hundreds over covers and would have picked out a few to photo (many of these are in the public eye already for crying out loud). As for the rest, it's a limted selection of cars, more than half of which are enclosed in a garage-o-matic rack system that hasn't worked in years. These and a bunch of Americana. That said, a shout out for the Cunningham on display - super rare, super interesting. While the story of the founder is interesting and he was an impressive man, this is still a museum/building in search of a purpose. Not especially rewarding unless you are already in the area.
Written December 24, 2022
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Bruce T
Talbott, TN239 contributions
Sep 2020 • Couples
Bought a combo ticket for the museum and House of Refuge. Such a good museum, so many cars in the collection, interesting information about namesake Sterling Elliott, Wyatt's carved circus and parade was incredible. Lawrence Regier who built a boat from a scrap airplane gas tank and junk parts was on site to explain that project...kids loved it. We will return another time for sure....
Written September 30, 2020
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
marie s
Huntington, NY992 contributions
Jan 2021 • Couples
This museum is dedicated to one of the most prolific inventors in the US. There are bicycles, cars, art, baseball cards and all the docents are very knowledgeable . We enjoyed our tour and went back again to some of the exhibits to look at them again. A nice way to spend a rainy day on the Treasure Coast. There is no food in the museum but close by are many restaurants.
Written January 24, 2021
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Do I need tickets for the king tut exhibit?
Written February 20, 2024
What was elliots first name and what did he do for a living besidesinventing card
Written July 3, 2018
The original Elliott Museum was built in 1961 by Harmon Elliott as a tribute to his father, Sterling Elliott. On November 18, 1961
Sterling Elliott (1852–1922) produced a series of successful inventions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He held more than 125 patents, receiving his first at age 22. He was foremost an Inventor but also a successful businessman. His tenacity and determination to improve on everyday objects helped enhance the quality of life for established businesses, as well as the average person. His inventive mind and creative genius developed the first Knot Tying machine (No.237,966 ), the low wheeled trotting sulky (No.494,113), the Elliott addressing machine (No.707,961), the pneumatic tire (No.487,874), the ball bearing (No. 483,836) and last but not least the unequal turning of the front wheels or steering knuckle (i.e.- kingpin) that would turn out to be a critical element in the success of the automobile.
Mr. Elliott’s first well-known invention was the non-turning front axle and self-equalizing brake system he incorporated on his four-wheel quadricycle when he discovered that the wheels on the bike squealed when turning. That is when he realized that you couldn’t just connect the front wheels of a normal pair of bicycles with a tie rod, that somehow the inside wheel must turn at a slower speed than the one on the outside if you were to prevent that squeal. With this in mind, Mr. Elliott went home and into his pantry that was between the kitchen and the dining room, there he fastened a piece of string between the inside surfaces of each door. Then, whether swung to the right or the left, the doors remained parallel and swung exactly the same. Next he shortened the string so that the doors were at an angle, their hinges being further apart than their front edges. Standing in the pantry he pushed the left hand door toward the kitchen and noted that only a small amount of movement in this direction produced considerably more movement to the right hand door. After again closing the doors he pushed the right hand door a small distance into the dining room and noticed that the kitchen door opened again wider than it had before. It didn’t take long for him to convert that principle to his quadricycle. It took an imaginative bicycle manufacturer to come up with the steering solution, so simple, that it has remained to this day the basic system of front wheel steering implemented in automobiles worldwide.
Although this patent expired in 1907, the records show that a number of early automobile manufacturers paid royalties to Elliott for this invention. Among these were the Duryea, Haynes, and Stanley
Elliott’s Quadricycle (Velocipede), for which he received United States Patent No. 442,663 on December 16, 1890, featured the non-turning front axle, the unequal turning of the front wheels, a differential rear axle, independent vertical action of all four wheels, and self-equalizing brakes. Many of Sterlings inventions, including the quadricycle, can be found in the Elliott Museum which was founded by his only son, Harmon Elliott.[1]
Early life
Sterling Elliott was born in 1852 on a farm in Ortonville, Michigan. At the age of twelve years all of the farm work was turned over to Sterling. At the age of seventeen, with help from his mother, Sterling Elliott packed a bag and left home. He walked the 92 miles to Grand Rapids where he arrived in 1869 with about $8.00 in his pocket. His first job in Grand Rapids was to work on the railroad trains selling candy and fruit. In 1870 he went to Chicago where he worked for a wealthy business man, Mr. Matthew Laflin. In Chicago Sterling Elliott was granted several United States Patents on his invention, but he had no shop of his own and contracted with others to manufacture his inventions. Mr. Elliott decided to move to Boston, Massachusetts where he opened his first machine shop. In 1882 he bought some land a few miles west of Boston and moved into his own factory (Elliott 5-11).
Bicycle era
From 1885 to 1896 Sterling Elliott made many products, but his principal products were bicycles and trotting sulkies and as a side line he published "The Bicycling World" and was President of the League of American Wheelmen and Chairman of its committee that controlled Bicycle Racing (Pridmore and Hurd 10). In 1887 Sterling Elliott made a four-wheeled bicycle which he called a quadricycle and with it experienced all the problems that automobile manufacturers were later to face. Sterling Elliott sold the Elliott Bicycle Factory to the Stanley Brothers of Stanley Steamer car fame and opened the Elliott Addressing Machine Company in 1900 (Elliott 21-25).
Elliott Addressing Machine Company
Sterling Elliott had invented the addressing machine to address his magazine wrappers in 1898. In 1909 Sterling Elliott asked his only son Harmon Elliott to become his partner at the Elliott Addressing Machine Company. Harmon accepted the position and took over management after Sterling's death on February 13, 1922 (Elliott 52).
0 seconds ago
Written July 5, 2018
Hi:
Is there a place to eat inside? If not, can one go out to eat and be able to get back? If yes, what it offers?
Also, do you accept tickets brought thru Groupon?
Thanks
Written November 17, 2016
Hi, I left the museum for a bit and did get back in. There is no food in the museum, sorry!
Written November 13, 2018
There is a baseball card collection, memorabilia from actress Francis Langford, inventions from Herman Elliott, various traveling exhibits which current one has lots of info on water and ocean research. Any visit will generally take 1.5 to 2.5 hours depending on how much you wish to read and observe exhibits. There are lectures that are very educational - ones we attended was from Classic Cars, another with Former MLB Commissioner Fay Vincent, and a talk about the Moon Landing from former Grumman execs. The place is really a treat and worthy a visit.
Written November 8, 2016
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