Seaside Homes for Sale

Living in Seaside

Seaside was founded in 1981 by developer Robert Davis and planned by Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, whose form based code set four rules for every building, width, height, build to line, and balcony, and whose approach was branded New Urbanism and went on to shape planning across the country. J.S. Smolian bought the 80 acres on the Gulf coast in 1946, and his grandson Robert Davis was deeded that land in 1978. The town organizes around Central Square, a formal green facing the Gulf, ringed by Modica Market, Sundog Books, and the open-air amphitheater, the central green the town's mixed use buildings front, where live music runs through the season. Every building answers to the same four code rules, which is why modernist, neoclassical, and hyper modernist buildings share a street without breaking it, and the code goes further and requires that no two picket fences be alike. Seaside stood in for the town of Seahaven in the 1998 film The Truman Show, which was shot here. Beyond the town center, the plan reserved room for uses a beach development would normally skip: an artist colony, an interfaith chapel, and a repertory theater sit among the town's 423 residential units, 42 specialty shops, and 12 restaurants. WaterColor adjoins it on the west and Seagrove on the east, which puts two more of the corridor's beach neighborhoods immediately either side of the town line.

• Central Square town green
• Modica Market and Sundog Books
• Open-air amphitheater live music
• Radial street plan from the town center