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Tips for the trip Down by the Seaside
By Dorothy Smiljanich/For The Tampa TribuneOriginally published June 5, 1994
SEASIDE - In a local cafe, Robert S. Davis savors a cup of frothy cappuccino - ``The best this side of Italy'' - and muses, ``We had in mind the reinvigorating of the tradition of house building.''
Davis seems as unassuming as what he had in mind was revolutionary: He planned to develop an ideal community, not just a bunch of houses, but an ideal community where the buildings and the land and the people could exist in harmony, each with the other.
Only a lengthy stretch of time will reveal the ultimate success of so visionary an undertaking. But even now, more than a decade after he broke ground on this Florida Panhandle resort with that intention in mind, it has brought world-class honor and fame to the region.
Seaside has spawned a host of look-alikes and wanna-bes all up and down the coast and has done much to reinvigorate - at the very least - the tradition of house building in this region, once known chiefly as ``the Redneck Riviera.''
Sophisticated and casual, Seaside also has brought unmeasured - perhaps immeasurable - pleasure to the thousands of visitors and hundreds of owners and residents who have bought into Davis' dream, buying property, building a house, renting a cottage, staying in a motel, or merely dropping by for the afternoon to enjoy the shopping or the dining.
ALL IN THE FAMILY
The story of Seaside goes back at least as far as Davis' grandfather who, Davis says, bought these 80 acres in 1946 for $100 each.Davis remembered fondly boyhood summers spent playing among the dunes of these white sand beaches, swimming and fishing in these clear turquoise waters, and visiting with family and friends on the cool porches of the old beach cottages.
So, when this undeveloped land came to him, he resolved in some way to recapture that time and place through its wise use.
A developer and builder in Miami during the 1960s and '70s, Davis turned to architects Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, as well as theoretician Leon Krier, in devising a master plan that would wed sun, sand, sea, buildings and people in a natural way. Their collaboration provided a development code that led to a community of like-minded, if not altogether like-looking homes.
Davis calls the goal ``coherence and cohesiveness,'' and points to communities such as Key West, Charleston, S.C., and Martha's Vineyard, Mass., as examples of the concept.
While the occasional Seaside house veers idiosyncratically askew (remaining faithful to the letter of the code nonetheless), most of the homes share similar, mandated features, including wood construction, metal roofs, ample porches and white picket fences - no two of which may be of the same design on the same street.
``We were hoping people would exhaust their creativity on the picket fences and the houses would be simple, but it didn't quite work out that way,'' Davis explains, smiling and shrugging as he meanders down one of the paths linking the complex of homes to Seaside's quarter-mile of beachfront.
At the Gulf of Mexico, the paths end in wooden boardwalks and distinctive white pavilions - Davis calls them ``ceremonial gateways to the beach'' - that carry visitors up and over the dunes and natural vegetation holding the beach in place.
Crossing the boardwalk and coming upon the beach, Davis remarks, almost to himself, ``I have lived here 15 years and every morning when I walk up to this pavilion, my heart races.''
PROTECTIVE DUNES
While much of Florida's Panhandle suffered devastation and erosion in the wake of the hurricanes of 1995, Seaside came through relatively unscathed, due in some measure to its intact, healthy dunes, which provide a natural protective barrier between the sea and the houses.Surveying the recovering beach, he notes, ``The shoreline moved in. The scrub oaks were farther out. We lost an amazing amount of beach. The waves were lapping at the floor of this pavilion, which is 25-to 30-feet above the ground. But the stairs were designed to wash away.''
He looks around, as if for the missing stairs, and adds, ``They were designed to wash away and they did.'' But the damage is minimal at Seaside.
Davis and his family are among the 40 or 50 people who live year-round in Seaside and who share their community, mostly in the summertime, with seasonal visitors and part-time residents.
While future plans call for a hotel and a school, the community already boasts several shopping spots, an artists square, an auditorium, an outdoor performance hall, tennis courts, swimming pool, croquet lawn and one of Florida's better bookstores, SunDogBooks. Because Seaside covers only 80 acres, everything is convenient and within walking or biking distance.
SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE
Because Seaside is nestled on the Panhandle coastline, it offers all the pleasures of that popular vacation region, from swimming and fishing, to shopping and dining.Nearby Pensacola and Panama City offer in-town diversions, including an amusement park and the like, while much of the adjacent land is owned and protected by the state, including Grayton Beach State Recreation Area. (Grayton Beach itself is a flourishing artist colony.) The 400-acre park is adjacent to Seaside and, although still recovering from the 1995 hurricanes when we visited in December, is widely acknowledged to be one of the more beautiful beaches in the country.
Another state-owned attraction only a few minutes away is Eden State Gardens, located at Point Washington, one of Walton County's older communities. The centerpiece of the park is the Wesley family home, built in 1898 and remodeled in the 1960s by the independent heiress Lois Maxon as a showplace for her art and antique collections.
Thirty-minute guided tours are offered of the home and visitors can stroll the grounds at leisure.
Now that Seaside is maturing and his vision has been made manifest on this land, Davis is exploring another world - one less accessible to the casual visitor, but no less revolutionary - the world of cyberspace.
Through his Seaside Institute, a nonprofit organization ``committed to the restoration of civic life,'' and in conjunction with learned academics, theoreticians, artists, architects and assorted and sundry others, Davis is exploring a place where, as he puts it, ``the connection in design between electronic space and physical space can interface.''
He is interested, he says, in exploring ``the electronic analogues of physical spaces and neighborhoods.''
There perhaps it is best to leave Robert S. Davis, a man who took 80 acres of Florida Gulf-front property and did something with it no one else had ever done. As Seaside is fulfilling the promise he envisioned for it, he has turned his thoughts already to quite a different challenge in quite a different place.
Tips for your trip to Seaside
If you go...Here are a few general suggestions:
How to get there: Seaside, a Gulf-front resort community, is located along County Road 30-A in Walton County between Pensacola (75 miles to the west) and Panama City (35 miles to the east). It is a full day's drive from Tampa. We flew into Pensacola and drove over in a rental car.
Where to stay: Although the Panhandle beaches are full of hotels, motels, inns and condominiums ranging in price from the inexpensive to the costly, visitors wanting to sample the Seaside experience probably should stay at Seaside. Lodging options there include a bed and breakfast, a motel, apartments, condominiums and private cottages that range from tiny accommodations for two to sprawling homes with five or more bedrooms. Needless to say, prices range widely also, depending on style and size of the accommodations, as well as the season (summer is high time in North Florida).
Figure on starting at about $125 per night and heading upward - sometimes as dramatically high as $600 or $700 during the high season for a cottage with six bedrooms.
Where to dine: While guests can economize by preparing their own meals (lodgings usually come with furnished kitchens), others may want to eat out. In Seaside, a small, friendly and family-run market and deli, the Modica Market, caters to guests with prepared items as well as provisions. Dining options include Shades, a casual restaurant; the charm and style of the private dining room at Josephine's, a B&B (non-B&B-guests should make early reservations); a new Greek eatery; a pizzeria; a sandwich shop; and, the centerpiece of Seaside dining, Bud and Alley's, overlooking the Gulf and, unfortunately, closed the day we visited in December.
Not to worry: A few minutes away to the west, we found a new and wonderful option, Frangista Seafood and Spirits, where the seafood is as fine as we have ever had anywhere in Florida, from haute cuisine items such as redfish with spice cucumber-corn relish and roast garlic butter sauce, 17.95; sauteed soft-shell crabs with tomato-avocado salsa and cilantro-red chile dipping sauce, $16.95 to ``Old Florida Specialties,'' (Southern Fried Catfish, $10.95; oysters, $13.95; baked stuffed crabs, $9.95). The related Frangista Beach Inn offers lodging. For more information, write Frangista Beach Inn, 1860 Beach Road 98, Destin, Fla. 32541 or call 800-382-2612 or (904) 837-2515.
For more information: Seaside, P.O. Box 4730, Seaside, Fla. 32459 or call (904) 231-1320 or 800-277-8696; South Walton Tourist Development Council, P.O. Box 1248, Santa Rosa Beach, Fla. 32459; 800-822-6877.