Seaside Post Office
Conspicuously located in the bustling town center, the post office was the second civic building to be built in Seaside, after Ernesto Buch’s Tupelo Street Beach Pavilion, according to “Visions of Seaside” by Dhiru A. Thadani. “Having a physical post office at Seaside established a sense of place and gave the town credibility and the perception of being real,” Thadani writes. “Subliminally this convinced potential home buyers that a town would emerge over time.”
Seaside founder Robert Davis designed the building, which instantly became a landmark for the town when it opened June 3, 1985, marking the town center. “It did seem to me that having a post office would be an important symbolic element in establishing Seaside as a town,” he says. “And … it has become an important civic and social element for Seaside.”
Davis designed the post office with the help of Bob Lamar, an interior designer from Pensacola, and the American Vignola and the Builders Companion, two of a number of handbooks and manuals of the 19th and early 20th centuries that were used by carpenters and masons to build competent classical buildings. Master carpenter Terry Londeree built the post office.
The Seaside Post Office has since become the most photographed building in Seaside, and arguably one of the most photographed in the country.