Rosemary Beach
How a 107-acre tract east of Inlet Beach became a Dutch West Indies–inspired town, designed by the planners who launched American New Urbanism.
History
How five towns shaped 30A.
The south side of Scenic Highway 30A holds a remarkable concentration of deliberately-designed beach towns. Three of them were master-planned, code-bound, and built from a written architectural rulebook — and each tells a different story about how Americans tried to remember how to build a town in the late twentieth century. Beside them sits the exception that proves the rule: Grayton Beach, the unplanned 1890 village the planners were all looking at. And at the east end sits the newest case of all — Watersound, assembled phase by phase by the paper company that already owned the land. This series traces those stories, one town at a time.
01 Read → 02 Read → 03 Read → 04 Read → 05 Read →
Alys Beach
The all-white Bermudian and Antiguan town funded by EBSCO Industries — and the only community in the country built entirely to a Category 5 hurricane standard.
Seaside
The original 30A town. Robert Davis inherited 80 acres from his grandfather in 1978; the master plan he drew with Duany Plater-Zyberk launched American New Urbanism.
Grayton Beach
The unplanned original: an 1890 village of dirt streets and dance halls that survived hurricanes and fire, got wrapped in a state park, and still answers to “Nice Dogs, Strange People.”
Watersound
Not a town but a portfolio: the gated Nantucket-shingle beach village Robert A.M. Stern planned in 2001, the 1,440 inland acres behind it, and the highway pavilion that finally gave the east end a public square.