Seaside Town Center in Walton County, Florida

Photograph: Seaside, Florida.jpg by paigeh · CC BY-SA 2.5 · Restored from the credited Wikimedia Commons file, normalized to the consistent attraction-card frame and converted to WebP by 1stFlorida.com. Portrait originals retain their complete composition over a softly blurred extension of the same photograph.

Walton County attraction

Seaside Town Center

Walton County · Panhandle & Emerald Coast

The town that started the whole idea, built on eighty acres from 1981 onward.

ABOUT THIS PLACE

Robert Davis inherited the land from his grandfather in 1978 and hired the architects Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, who drove through old Southern towns with him looking at what made them work. What came out of it was one of the first communities in America laid out on the principles of New Urbanism: narrow streets, short blocks, deep porches, everything within walking distance, and a building code requiring that no house repeat another. The design was finished around 1985. Central Square is the heart of it, with shops and restaurants around the edge and events through the year, including outdoor movie nights. The Seaside Chapel, designed by Scott Merrill, is the landmark people photograph. The town was the main filming location for The Truman Show in 1998, which is how most of the country first saw it. Everything here is walkable and the streets are open to anyone. Thirty years of Florida beach towns have copied it, and most of them are within a few miles

GETTING THERE

Get Directions ↗Official Website ↗

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