A Beach Town Built from a Memory
On the Gulf Coast near Santa Rosa Beach, Seaside feels both familiar and unlike anywhere else. Its narrow brick streets, white-sand paths, welcoming porches, and small public squares suggest an older Florida beach village, yet the community was created only a few decades ago. That blend of memory and imagination is at the heart of Seaside’s history.
The story begins in 1946, when J.S. Smolian purchased approximately 80 acres beside what is now Seagrove Beach. He envisioned a summer camp for his employees, but the project never came to life. Instead, Smolian kept the property and brought his family there for summer vacations. His grandson, Robert Davis, grew up with those coastal memories, which later became the inspiration for Seaside.
The neighborhood’s name is wonderfully direct. Seaside was named for its setting beside the Gulf of Mexico and for the simple coastal life Davis hoped to preserve: days spent near the water, evenings on porches, and a town small enough to explore on foot. Rather than inventing a grand or resort-style name, the founders chose a word that expressed the community’s defining relationship with the shore.
From “Cracker Shacks” to a New Kind of Town
In the late 1970s, Davis and his wife, Daryl, began considering what to do with the family land. Davis did not want to create another conventional subdivision filled with large roads, isolated houses, and parking lots. He remembered the small cottages of his childhood and wanted to build a place where homes, shops, beaches, and gathering spaces would be connected.
To bring that vision to life, the Davises hired Miami architects Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk. Their early assignment was to design a community of modest “cracker shacks,” a term referring to simple wood-frame homes traditionally associated with Florida. The architects traveled throughout the South, studying historic towns, coastal villages, porches, street patterns, building proportions, and local materials. Their research helped them create something new that still felt rooted in the past.
Construction began in 1981 with just two houses, one street, and a beach pavilion. The project was intentionally started on a small scale, allowing the founders to test their ideas and grow gradually. The first cottages were shaped by the climate and traditions of the Florida Panhandle: raised forms, shaded porches, deep roof overhangs, and materials chosen for durability in a coastal environment.
By 1982, Duany and Plater-Zyberk had created the master plan and architectural code that would guide Seaside’s growth. The plan placed a town center within a short walk of the homes, with streets and pathways leading toward the Gulf. Walton County’s later Old Seagrove Neighborhood Plan identifies Seaside’s town center and radial street pattern as defining features of its New Urbanist design.
The Streets and Spaces That Define Seaside
A walk through Seaside reveals that the neighborhood’s heritage is expressed most clearly in its public spaces. Streets such as Tupelo Street and Savannah Street lead toward the water, while other lanes connect the residential areas to Central Square. The streets are narrow, brick-paved, and designed to slow traffic rather than encourage it.
Many of the Gulf-facing streets end at individual beach pavilions. These structures are more than attractive landmarks. They create a sense of arrival, provide shade and orientation, and symbolize the founders’ belief that the beach should be a shared civic resource rather than merely a private backdrop for homes. The first pavilion was built alongside the original houses as a gateway to the sea.
Central Square remains the social heart of Seaside. Its shops, restaurants, galleries, and open spaces create the feeling of a traditional town center, where daily errands and community life happen in the same place. The iconic white Seaside Post Office, designed and built in the 1980s, is one of the neighborhood’s most recognizable civic buildings. Nearby, the old-fashioned water tower adds another memorable piece of the town’s visual identity.
Ruskin Place offers a different but equally important character. Surrounded by townhouses, shops, and gathering spaces, the square was designed as an artist-oriented enclave. Its name reflects Seaside’s broader interest in culture, education, and civic life. In the early years, the Seaside Institute hosted concerts, plays, films, lectures, and storytelling events in places such as Ruskin Place and the Tupelo Pavilion.
Another landmark is Seaside Chapel, completed in 2000 and designed by architect Scott Merrill. With its steep roof and simple, light-filled interior, the chapel serves as both a working place of worship and an architectural focal point. It reflects the community’s tradition of making even small buildings feel meaningful and communal.
A Community That Shaped New Urbanism
Seaside’s influence extends well beyond Santa Rosa Beach. Its walkable plan, mixed-use town center, front porches, compact lots, and emphasis on public gathering places helped make it a nationally recognized example of New Urbanism. The movement promoted neighborhoods where people could walk to shops, schools, parks, and civic spaces instead of depending entirely on automobiles.
The Seaside Institute helped spread those ideas. Founded in the early 1980s, it developed educational and cultural programming, and beginning in 1993, presented the Seaside Prize to leaders in architecture, planning, and community design. The institute also hosted seminars and walking tours that brought planners, architects, public officials, and students to South Walton to study the neighborhood firsthand.
Seaside Neighborhood School, founded in 1996, added another layer to the community’s civic identity. Its presence reinforced the original idea that Seaside should function as more than a vacation development. It could also be a place where people learn, work, gather, and build lasting relationships.
Seaside in Popular Culture and Local Memory
Seaside gained worldwide attention when it stood in for the fictional town of Seahaven in *The Truman Show*, released in 1998. The film introduced millions of viewers to the neighborhood’s pastel cottages, tidy streets, town square, and unmistakable Gulf Coast atmosphere. While the movie made Seaside famous, longtime residents know that its importance began well before Hollywood arrived.
Over the decades, Seaside has grown from two houses and a single street into a community of more than 300 homes, shops, restaurants, and galleries. It has also become part of a larger South Walton landscape that includes older communities such as Seagrove Beach and newer New Urbanist towns inspired by its example.
What makes Seaside special is not simply its architecture or its popularity. It is the way the neighborhood turns ordinary coastal habits into shared traditions: walking to breakfast, meeting friends in Central Square, watching the sunset from a pavilion, listening to music outdoors, or returning home along a shaded path. Its history is carefully designed, but its strongest heritage is lived day by day.
For anyone exploring Santa Rosa Beach, Seaside is worth experiencing slowly. Follow Tupelo Street toward the Gulf, pause in Ruskin Place, admire the post office and water tower, and take time to notice how the homes face the street. In those details, the original dream remains clear: a seaside town shaped for people, memory, and community.