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I'm doing something a little different today.
I'm hijacking Arts Blast for a special editon to champion a cause — saving the Szechuan Palace building in Vero Beach. It's been fifteen years since Ralph Sexton gave me a personal tour of the artwork at the Szechuan Palace, one piece of Waldo Sexton's legacy, which includes Ocean Grill and the Patio restaurant.
I was writing the story for a 2005 issue of Vero Beach Magazine at the time and the photos I took were for my reference and aren't very good. Sorry. Jon Pine did the great professional work for the finished publication. If you can lay your hands on a copy of the original Vero Beach Magazine, you'll see Pine's fabulous shots. I can't tell you which month it was but it might be on the VBM website. Not having an iPhone back then, I must have used my point-and-shoot Canon for the photos you'll see here
Your regular Arts Blast will be on its way later today.
What Would Waldo Do?
Or, Hold That Wrecking Ball, Please, Mister
Saving History
A Vero Beach newcomer reading the news lately might be wondering what's the big deal about saving a defunct Chinese restaurant. The Szechuan Palace building is much more than that for local history buffs. I'll share some tidbits here from the notes I took and the transcription of a taped interview with Ralph Sexton, Waldo Sexton's son, for the story I wrote for Vero Beach Magazine in 2005. One caveat: Not everybody telling the story remembered things in the same way.
Ralph told me:
Waldo didn't build it. The building's first use was as a country store on 43rd Avenue between 12th and 16th Streets in the 1930s. It was moved to the corner of SR 60 and 43rd Avenue, where it stayed until about 1950. Then, when SR60 was being widened, the building had to be moved. "Grover Fletcher was the mover," Ralph said. "When Waldo saw Grover with a building on a lowboy headed south on 43rd Avenue, he said, ' Grover, where are you going?' When Grover said he didn't know, Waldo (who had a couple of lots where the building sits now,) said, 'Well, put it here.' So Grover put the building there."
Waldo first decided to make an art colony out of it and he invited young artists in, to paint if they wanted to and to sell their wares. "Jim and Joan Hutchinson were two of the renowned artists that started there. I'll show you frescoes they painted in the dining room."
Ralph went on:
"He messed with that a while and didn’t get anywhere, so he decided to make a restaurant out of it." It became the Turf Club and Grill, Eddie McGuire proprietor and chef. A series of restaurant attempts followed, none lasting very long. "Waldo loved to build restaurants without parking lots or kitchens. That was his specialty. When I took over, I had to buy the lot next door so we would have parking." It also lacked air conditioning. "I can remember telling Dan Richardson, Dan, I’ll buy you lunch at the Turf Club. 'I’m not going in there, they don’t have AC,'” was the response.
Air conditioning, a kitchen, a parking lot, and an upstairs bar were added when Ralph took over. "I had to make 4000 square feet to get a whiskey license and be ready to feed them at all times." Over the years, several entrepreneurs tried to run restaurants there but not all succeeded. Sally Baker, Ralph Caprino (the only pizza man in Vero at the time), Don Weyman (Don's Haufbrau House). "He sold the lease to a couple of girls, can't remember their names, who continued it as a German restaurant. They sold it to another guy who made a French restaurant out of it. He didn't last long." It was a Greek restaurant before Caprino took over the lease again to serve American food. "That didn't last but a few months, maybe a year. Then he sold his lease to John and Sue Laing for the Szechuan Palace."
Ralph wanted to make it like Waldo would have, using pecky cypress where he could. "The ceiling in the first part of the building is cedars of Lebanon. The first Catholic priest who came to town planted cedars of Lebanon, right on 60. St. Helen’s was a little old building, and he was the first padre. He brought the trees with him. When they decided to tear it down and build a new one (when they were widening 60), Waldo got the logs and had them sawed into lumber. Beautiful lumber. It made a beautiful ceiling."
"Waldo brought Lillian Tutcik from Palm Beach, a mural painter. Painter of the mural at Mama Mia’s restaurant on US 1 in Palm Beach. Waldo talked her into coming up to paint at Szechuan. He put her up at the Driftwood. ... Seemed to take months and months and months to get the mural painted. My momma could hardly wait to move her out and finally did."
Ralph said Waldo didn't do any decorating."Not drapes or curtains, maybe a carpet. Most of the style now is mine."
Photo: Tutcik's depiction of the Seminole Corn Dance. The bonfire is believed to have been painted by A.E. "Bean" Backus.
From my notes:
Jim Hutchison was born in Fort Pierce in 1931. His brother-in-law was A.E. Backus, who gave Jim art instruction. He and his wife, Joan, got permission from the Seminole Tribe to camp out on its Brighton reservation to study tribal life. The collection of portraits and landscapes he painted in four years there was exhibited at the 1965 World's Fair.
Merilee Tutcik, daughter of artist Lillian Tutcik, said for the magazine article: “He took my mother to the Seminole Reservation where she met the (I believe it was) great granddaughter of Tommy Tigertail. … The great granddaughter was very old but had made the traditional Seminole woman’s dress for a special occasion for herself but instead, presented it to my mother. … The dress is the same one in the painting of the Seminole woman on the water in the storm. My mother called it ‘The Goddess of the Storm.’ She also used her own face as the Seminole woman's face.” The photograph of a door (below) holds signatures of the artists who contributed to the collection of paintings in the restaurant.
Merilee said, “Down the hall towards the restroom, past the white horses, there is a deer with a (real) bullet hole in his head. Waldo tried to shoot it but couldn't position himself properly, as he was right handed. So, my mother, who was left handed and a crack shot, placed the shot between the deer’s eyes.” Next to that painting is a large mural featuring soldiers on white horses, which might have represented the Wars of Removal of the 19th century.
More from Merilee: ”Close examination of the painting covered up by a serving station shows a fire burning with Waldo Sexton sitting in front of the fire and a pair of boots drying. Waldo brought the boots in one day and told my mother he wanted them included in the mural. He then proceeded to tell her that the boots were from the same manufacturer that manufactured the boots worn by the troops of Field Marshall Rommel in North Africa and would she be sure to paint them in such a way that the label would be visible."
Joan Hutchison remembered painting "a mural on the big beams that rimmed the high ceiling of the building's kitchen walls. Waldo wanted us to paint ‘a parade of edible animals’ as the theme. Jim says the room where we painted the edible animals mural was not part of the original cracker shack, but an addition to the west side of that house. ... As we painted, Waldo would often come and watch, entertaining us with tall tales. The mural was finished just before Vero Beach's first Waldo Sexton Day."
Granted, Waldo's collection might not be appreciated by all who see it. His wife is supposed to have said, “All those artists painting there — it’s just like putting a bouquet of flowers in a pig sty.”
In August 2004, County Historian Ruth Stanbridge, for the Indian River County Historical Society, endorsed Ralph’s Sexton’s appeal to the Bureau of Historic Preservation in Tallahassee to have the building listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
Maybe it could join the Laura Riding Jackson house at Indian River State College.
Photo: Tutcik's depiction of the Seminole Corn Dance. The bonfire is believed to have been painted by A.E. "Bean" Backus.
Photo: Sean Sexton, grandson of Waldo, and Merilee Tutcik, daughter of artist Lillian Tutcik, sit at a table in the original Turf Club building to look through a scrapbook of photographs and newspaper clippings.
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