Originally built for the use and benefit of the female employees of the Warner Brothers Corset Company, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

[3] The Seaside Institute was designed as a dining, lecture and meeting hall with library, music and reading rooms for the benefit of these female employees.

[2][4] An 1887 account of the purposes of the Institute printed in The Century expresses the particular solicitousness toward women employees:In these days, when the hearts of the compassionate are torn by so many harrowing tales of man's inhumanity towards working-women, it is pleasant to be able to set forth the good deeds of these two chivalrous employers.

If the women who work are to be saved from their wretchedness, it must be done by the appearance on their behalf of such knightly employers as these....[5]The Seaside Institute was dedicated in an 1887 ceremony attended by Frances Folsom Cleveland, the wife of the President, and served its intended purposes for a number of years.

"[8] Likewise, the institute was seen as pointing towards a solution to the perceived ills of women working outside the home: "It ought to be possible for modern invention ... to carry this admirable enterprise further on, and to provide for the thousand girls [better lodgings].