SEASIDE®’s beach pavilions are a special part of the town’s design by Wendy O. Dixon
The Seaside beach pavilions, dotted along the south side of each of Seaside’s streets, are an integral part of the town’s unique design, and reflect the visions of the award-winning architects who designed them. Three of Seaside’s pavilions, situated in the center of town, are accessible to the public (Seaside Pavilion, Coleman Pavilion and Mohney Pavilion). The remaining nine private pavilions are available for homeowners and Seaside guests. As a continuing series, The Seaside Times explores each pavilion’s unique features and the architects who designed them.
East Ruskin Street Beach Pavilion, built in 1987 Architects: Stuart Cohen and Anders Nereim
Stuart Cohen and Anders Nereim Architects began practicing together in 1979. Their partnership spanned six years and included residential and small scale commercial projects. In addition to new projects, they also designed the adaptive reuse of the 175 North Franklin Street in Chicago, a four-story loft building, and won a Chicago AIA Distinguished Building Award for their work there.
They also received awards from the American Wood Council for their design of the Ruskin Street Pavilion in Seaside and for their Morgenstern Residence. Their work was published widely and exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, The Chicago Museum of Science and Industry and the Walker Art Center. In 1985, Anders Nereim opened his own private firm and Stuart Cohen remained principal architect of his firm, which eventually became Stuart Cohen & Julie Hacker Architects.
The requirements for the Ruskin Street Pavilion were: a changing room, a storage area, a toilet, a dune walkover, a place to sit and look at the water and a stair down to the beach. The toilet, changing room and the storage shed became separate “gateway” pavilions to mark the beginning of the dune walkover. They were designed as miniatures of the main pavilions which were conceived as simple roof structures.
“We wanted to make a pavilion that would be “of the place,” the architects note. “So the back edges of the pavilions were designed as benches that copy Seaside’s ubiquitous Adirondack chairs. The ends of the pavilion were to be trellised panels, again a gesture to incorporate the ubiquitous trellising of Seaside’s houses. We realized that if the scale of the trellising were increased it could form the actual structure holding up the roofs. Separating the sitting area into two pavilions and angling them was (Seaside founder) Robert Davis’ idea. He had just returned from Rome and thought of creating a directional space like the Campidoglio.”