Publix has rapidly opened dozens of new and remodeled grocery stores in Florida over the past few years, adopting a fresher design with more features for shoppers. In some cases, that meant tearing down stores from the last century to replace them with new ones built from the ground up.
Unfortunately, progress also means the loss of one of Florida's historical art troves: more than 200 massive, hand-painted tile murals that once greeted shoppers at stores across the state. By 2024, fewer than 20 remained, according to a history page by former Publix historian Jennifer Bush, and more have been lost since.
Three more went under this year.
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In 2026, the Lakeland-based grocery chain temporarily closed stores in Palm Bay, St.
Petersburg and West Palm Beach for remodeling. All of them once displayed tile mosaic murals in a riot of colors showcasing farms, fresh produce, wine and more.
Here's what to know about the end of an era.
Hundreds of Publix stores once displayed large tile murals
In the late 1950s, Publix founder George Jenkins was driving in California when he spotted a colorful mosaic mural of a bounty of fruits and vegetables at a Safeway and decided that would be perfect for his growing chain of grocery stores, Bush explained on Facebook. He asked the artist, John Garth, to create one for a new Fort Lauderdale store.
Garth designed the mural in two 10-foot-high panels of 50 feet and 20 feet and shipped the thousands of numbered square glass tiles to Florida to be assembled and mounted.
One mural was of a golden-haired goddess, based on his daughter, presenting a wide array of foods from around the world, while the other showed a group of Spanish explorers arriving in Florida.
Garth returned to Florida in 1964 to design a mural for a Lakeland store in the old Searstown Shopping Center, depicting farmers harvesting and selling fruits and vegetables in an expansive landscape. He made a third for a Winter Haven store, but died in 1971.
In the mid-1970s, Florida ceramic artist Pati Mills, who had never made a tile mural before, was commissioned to take over. Where Garth used different-colored glass tiles, she hand-painted vibrant designs onto ceramic tiles for the grocery chain.
Mills painted the tiles in her garage on four sheets of 4-foot-by-8-foot plywood. The tiles were then fired in one of seven kilns, requiring several temperature changes, and stacked using a number and letter system so the mural could be installed at Publix locations around the state. Each one took about two weeks.
“The largest one I ever did was on State Road 17 in Winter Haven. It was 95 feet long,” Mills told the Palm Beach Post in 2022. “They were all different sizes.”
She initially created colorful displays of cornucopias, fresh produce, and wines, but she pivoted to local scenes and landscapes from each community's history after some cities wanted to tax the murals as advertising because they depicted food on the front of a grocery store.
She also worked in subtle references to her children, Duke, Jamie, Eric and Angel, who helped with the murals.
Different Mills murals showed a marina with boats, Florida marshland teeming with native birds, a beachside market and children playing by a lakeside. She created more than 200 pieces of art for Publix from the 1970s through the 1990s.
Can the Publix hand-painted tile murals be saved?
Not easily. The 4-inch-by-4-inch tiles in Mills' murals would most likely break if they were removed from where they were cemented in place, and it isn’t practical to remove the murals and the walls, she said in 2022. Most were simply destroyed.
“It is like a bathroom wall. It is on concrete with mastic behind it,” Mills said. “When Publix gets ready to change, they will not wait around for someone to preserve something."
That said, some of the iconic Publix artworks have been preserved, moved or re-created.
In 2018, Garth’s murals from the old Fort Lauderdale Publix were painstakingly re-created by artist Tom Pritzen and installed at the entrance to the Polk County Tax Collector’s office in Lakeland. That location was originally one of the first Publix stores that Jenkins built in 1953.
The Garth mural in Lakeland was painted over in 2016 after a Save A Lot moved into the space where the Publix used to be, despite a petition from local and former residents. They were gently uncovered and exposed again in 2021.
A Mills mural of a cornucopia and farm that once graced the wall of the old Grove Park store was successfully moved five miles over to the Lake Miriam Publix in Lakeland, where it can be seen inside as part of the store's 2024-2025 redesign.
A tile mural of a pastoral village scene was saved in 2019 by The Trails Shopping Center's management company in Ormond Beach when the Publix there was demolished to make room for a larger one. The mural was moved to a nearby wall behind Keke's Breakfast Cafe.
In 2024, one of Mills' murals of a golfer from a Wellington store was moved, all 1,846 tiles, to the Publix corporate office.
Most Publix murals destroyed in remodels
Unfortunately, other local efforts to save murals have failed.
In Temple Terrace in 2011, local residents rallied but failed to save one of Mills' cornucopia murals before the 58-year-old Publix was torn down in a downtown redevelopment project. The mural also depicted a farm, a tractor and an orange grove. Instead, locals had it cleaned and professionally photographed, and fragments of the tiles were saved to use in stepping stones throughout the city, according to the Albertsons Florida Blogger.
Mills herself in 2022 said they had a good run.
“I fed my kids off the paintings. I bought my house on the lake. It had three bedrooms, six bathrooms and a six-car garage,” Mills said. “We worked for Publix, me and my kids, on commission for 25 years. I never had a contract.”
Three Publix murals lost in remodels in 2026
The three murals we lost this year were:
Palm Bay: Publix at Palm Bay Center, 4711 Babcock St. NE, closed on Saturday, July 11, so the aging store could be demolished for a new building. A sprawling tile mural showcasing a farm, a cornucopia, and a selection of fruit and wine was lost here.
St. Petersburg: The location in Eagles Park Retail Center at 5577 Park St. N in St. Petersburg closed on Saturday, March 7. The old store featured a tile mural of birds in Florida's wetlands.
West Palm Beach: The Publix in the Southdale Shopping Center at 828 Southern Blvd. closed on Saturday, Sept. 26. The store once boasted two large hand-painted tile murals at its entrance, with a farmer on a tractor, a cornucopia, and fruit and wines.
Are any original Publix murals left?
Publix was unable to provide a list of remaining murals in the wild, but you can see some of them here:
- Hialeah: The Publix at Gardens Square at 8515-8665 NW 186th Street displays five separate murals across the front of the building, featuring a bee-filled orange grove, a tractor, a dairy farm, an array of vegetables, and corn.
- Lakeland:
- Lake Miriam Publix: At the Publix in Lake Miriam Square, 4730 Florida Ave. S, there is a mural inside of a farm and a cornucopia rescued from another local store.
- Save A Lot: After being painted over for years, one of Garth's original glass-tile murals was uncovered on the wall of a former Publix at 917 E. Memorial Blvd.
- Polk County Tax Collector's Office: They're not the originals, but careful copies of Garth's first Fort Lauderdale murals appear on either side of the office at 916 N. Massachusetts Ave.
- Publix Corporate Office: A Mills mural of a golfer was transplanted to the office at 3300 Publix Corporate Parkway.
- Melbourne Beach: Publix in Driftwood Plaza at 3830 S Highway A1A still has a mural of a beach landscape.
- Ormond Beach: A mural of a village scene was rescued from a remodeled Publix in the Trails Shopping Center and moved nearby to the side of Keke's Breakfast Cafe at 260 N. Nova Road.
- Tallahassee: An orphaned Publix mural depicting the state Capitol remains on the wall of a shopping center at 3111 Mahan Drive where a Publix once stood. A Big Lots replaced the Publix and went under later, but the mural can be seen amid the construction going on as of Oct. 19.
Know of any Publix murals out there that aren't on the list? Let us know at cbridges@usatodayco.com.
Susan Salisbury, Palm Beach Post, contributed to this article.
C. A. Bridges is a journalist for the USA TODAY Network-Florida's service journalism Connect team. You can get all of Florida’s best content directly in your inbox each weekday by signing up for the free newsletter, Florida TODAY.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Historic Publix tile murals vanishing with renovations, new stores
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