Lincoln Park, Fort Pierce

Lincoln Park is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Fort Pierce, grown from a settlement called Edgartown, and its master plan area runs from U.S. Highway 1 to 33rd Street and from Avenue B to Avenue Q.

The City of Fort Pierce says that as the city expanded beyond the original fort established in the 1800s, a settlement called Edgartown emerged, and over time the community developed a bustling commercial district (City of Fort Pierce, Historical Lincoln Park). The same page counts Lincoln Park among the oldest communities in Fort Pierce and names Avenue D as the main corridor of the Village of Lincoln Park.

For planning purposes, the city's Lincoln Park Master Plan page defines the Lincoln Park area as the land from U.S. Highway 1 to 33rd Street and from Avenue B to Avenue Q, and says the plan is underway in partnership with the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council. Many of the neighborhood landmarks the city lists carry an Avenue D address.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the City of Fort Pierce says, Avenue D was the main corridor of Lincoln Park and the county's bustling center for African American owned shops, restaurants and businesses, with a theater among them.

The city's Historical Lincoln Park page calls those decades the heyday of Avenue D, and says the area is now experiencing revitalization and working to again become the center of pride for the community. It singles out the historic Lincoln Theater, which the city counts among only four African American owned theaters in the country. The master plan page describes the same years in its own words, calling Avenue D the heart of Lincoln Park, home to thriving African American owned shops, restaurants and a local theater (Lincoln Park Master Plan).

The Lincoln Theater also appears in the city's redevelopment plan. The 2020 Updated FPRA Plan describes activated streets with restaurant, boutique and hospitality uses around the Sunrise Theatre, the Historic Lincoln Theater and the Peacock Arts District, and says that activity reaches into adjacent Lincoln Park and Downtown as one part of what it calls Re-Setting the economic base of the Fort Pierce Redevelopment Area.

Lincoln Park is the neighborhood the city ties to author Zora Neale Hurston, to the Florida Highwaymen painters, and to Lincoln Park Academy, the district's 6-12 academic magnet school on Avenue I.

The city's Historical Lincoln Park page names Zora Neale Hurston and many of the Highwaymen among the neighborhood's residents, the Highwaymen being 26 African American landscape artists inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame in 2004, and calls Lincoln Park Academy one of the nation's top performing schools. The museum row comes from the city's Highwaymen Museum page, which places the museum in the historic Lincoln Park community, steps from where the movement began. The trail landmarks come from the city's Highwaymen Heritage Trail page, and the library row from the St. Lucie County library directory.

Two official sources date Lincoln Park Academy differently. The St. Lucie Public Schools profile calls it an Academic Magnet School and dates its legacy of excellence to 1923, with the phone (772) 468-5474, while the city trail page says the school became the area's first four-year black high school in 1921 and that it was accredited in 1928 as one of only four accredited black high schools in Florida. Both dates are printed here as each source gives them. The Highwaymen and Hurston guides in this Fort Pierce history section tell those two stories in full.

The Lincoln Park Master Plan is a Fort Pierce Redevelopment Agency plan, being developed with the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council as partner, to stabilize the neighborhood, add infill housing and revive Avenue D.

The city's master plan page lists the plan's focus: support neighborhood stabilization and strategic investment, encourage infill housing and redevelopment of vacant lots, attract and retain local businesses, revitalize Avenue D with strategies for an economic and cultural resurgence, and promote sustainable growth that honors the community's history and heritage. It builds on earlier planning work that the page names: the 2024 Lincoln Park Economic Analysis, the 2022 Downtown Master Plan and the 2020 Fort Pierce Redevelopment Plan.

On process, the page says community workshops in early 2026 gave residents and stakeholders a chance to shape the plan, and its latest update describes a Work-in-Progress draft with detailed design concepts for Avenue D and surrounding areas, a zoning and mapping analysis of the community, and renderings of proposed improvements. The master plan page is where the city posts each new step for Lincoln Park.

The 2020 redevelopment plan already pointed the same way. The 2020 Updated FPRA Plan says the Fort Pierce Planning Department and the Fort Pierce Redevelopment Agency shall examine revising lot dimensional guidelines for undersized parcels and evaluating increased residential densities in appropriate parts of the Redevelopment Area, naming Lincoln Park and the Peacock Arts District as examples.

The City of Fort Pierce is resurfacing about 1.6 miles of Avenue D from 29th Street to U.S. 1, adding ADA ramps, enhanced crosswalks and an overhead Lincoln Park gateway sign, as the first of a series of planned investments.

All rows come from the city's Avenue D Corridor Improvements page, which calls the Avenue D Road Improvement Project an important investment in the Lincoln Park community and the first in a broader series of planned investments, with the Lincoln Park Master Plan guiding what follows. The page says the work follows the recent grand opening of the Highwaymen Museum, warns that temporary lane closures and traffic pattern changes may occur along the corridor during construction, and posts construction progress under a Latest Updates heading, which is the place to check before driving Avenue D in Fort Pierce.

The City of Fort Pierce offers matching commercial facade grants for properties along the Avenue D corridor, and the city and its partners have completed a bus terminal and a linear park in Lincoln Park.

The Historical Lincoln Park page says the city and Lincoln Park residents have been instrumental in revitalization efforts such as streetscape and infrastructure projects and the removal of substandard housing units to encourage businesses to return, and that the city provides matching commercial facade grants for properties along Avenue D. It adds that the Intermodal Bus Terminal and Moore's Creek Linear Park were completed by the city, the Fort Pierce Redevelopment Agency and St. Lucie County together. The master plan page repeats the point, saying recent streetscape and infrastructure upgrades and the removal of substandard housing are helping create an environment that supports new businesses in Lincoln Park (Lincoln Park Master Plan).

The Highwaymen Museum belongs to the same effort. The city says the conversion of a 3,200 square foot former church and rooming house at 1234 Avenue D belongs to a long-term City and Fort Pierce Redevelopment Agency vision to revitalize the Avenue D commercial corridor and strengthen Fort Pierce as a regional arts and cultural destination (Highwaymen Museum). The Fort Pierce Redevelopment Agency guide covers the agency's other districts and grant programs.