The village was developed during World War I to alleviate a housing shortage caused by an influx of workers hired to work in the city's munitions factories.

It is a good example of an early government-funded project of this type, and was a collaborative design effort by R. Clipston Sturgis, Skinner & Walker, and Arthur Shurtleff.

They wanted to attract workers to Bridgeport, not just for the short-term war needs, but for the future of the city, and therefore chose to build quality housing.

[6] The USHC chose a number of locations in Bridgeport to build worker housing, but the largest lot was the one owned by The Crane Corporation.

[8] Seaside Village began as rentals for factory workers and their families, but became owner-occupied by 1955, when 90% of the tenants agreed to become part of cooperative housing.

[17] The manufacturers had expanded their factories, however they were unable to meet production quotas due to a severe lack of adequate housing for the workers.

[22] Arthur Shurtleff studied under Charles Eliot from 1895 to 1896 at Harvard and worked for Olmsted Brothers Landscape Architects from 1896 through 1905, before he opened his own firm in Boston.

[16] The first of the United States Housing Corporation projects to be completed was Black Rock Gardens, followed by the Wilmot Apartments, both designed by Sturgis with Skinner and Walker as associate architects.

The comfort of his family and conditions which will provide them with a chance to live under good conditions and sanitary surroundings have been carefully studied, and it is thought that the government will favor the plan of selling the houses to tenants if they so desire.” [26] The Crane site was chosen because it was within walking distance of the West End shops and would enable most workers to come home for lunch.

[28] The land was extremely flat, but the developers created an interesting arrangement using curved streets and placing units in varying combinations.

Delays in approvals enabled the architects and planners time to create scale models of the entire development and experiment in placing them in different ways.

Many of the original trees have succumbed to emerald ash borer and Dutch elm disease or heavy traffic for the sugar maples.

“A central playground is a feature of these plans.” [32] The buildings were to be made of brick even though this would mean that every brickyard in Connecticut was required to dedicate their output solely to this project.

The report stated that “A failure to promptly cease building operations on the signing of the armistice proved either a desire to complete their town beautiful experiments or to be helpful, at government expense, to the local communities involved.” [39] January 1920, the U.S. Housing Corporation sold Black Rock Apartments (216 units) and Crane Development (257 units) to the Bridgeport Housing Company as well as a few other properties for $1.3 million.

[40] On December 10, 1920, the Eighth National Conference on Housing in America arranged for an Automobile Tour of points of interest in Bridgeport and included Seaside Village.

“Burnham Street was originally a creek used by the sportsmen of Bridgeport as a storage place for boats in which they went out on the meadows to shoot water fowls.

The site of this village for years as a dump used by the City and by the Crane Company for their foundry material and shows the possibility of reclaiming land for housing purposes.” [41] On December 20, 1922, The Bridgeport Times, wrote an article about how attractive the Seaside Village homes are and that there was a model home open to the public at the corner of Burnham and Iranistan.

It was believed the desirability was due to its proximity to Seaside Park, the “excellent neighborhood”, atmosphere of trees and shrubbery, as well as the brick buildings with slate roofs.

On September 26, 1990, Seaside Village was officially listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the “Seaside Village Historic District.” It was stated that “alterations to this complex are slight” and goes on to cite the oriel windows, 6/6 windows topped by brick arches, wood shutters, various classically inspired door surrounds, with a predominant theme of Tuscan Doric.

“While the steep pitches of the roofs represent an attempt to adapt an early eighteenth-century southern form to a northern climate, the careful massing of the buildings, their Colonial Revival design vocabulary, and studied placement along picturesque, tree-lined streets all consciously recall Old New England villages, where outbuildings and extensions have been added over time to the original house.” They also stated that it “survives with surprising architectural integrity as the last of four U.S. Housing Corporation projects in Bridgeport.” [22] Over the course of years, changes in lifestyle, population, physical wear and tear, and inconsistent architectural and aesthetic standards began to warrant attention.

The concern about the long-term effect of the structure of the buildings, the need to set some architectural standards, and to prioritize the wishes of the community, prompted the formation of the Historic Preservation Committee in 2009.

Soon thereafter, the committee approached the Yale School of Architecture's Urban Design Workshop (YUDW) to discuss a possible collaboration for the development of a Master Plan.

The Plan would provide the community with direction on the inter-related issues of preservation, design guidelines, storm water management, landscape and streetscape, and traffic and parking, as well as looking at options for future development.

The Seaside Village Master Plan delivered what it promised in terms of direction on preservation, design guidelines, storm water management, landscape and streetscape, and traffic and parking, as well as options for future development.

[50] The Master Plan also played a role in the Rebuild by Design project, which had been created in response to the devastation in the northeastern United States caused by Superstorm Sandy.

Seaside Village's Master Plan gave Bridgeport's proposal a credible research and data-based document that addressed the kind of sustainability issues that the Rebuild by Design team would focus on for the city.

In addition to its role in securing funding to prevent flooding in the South End, the Master Plan was the inspiration for Seaside Village's Rain Garden Project.

The Urban Ecology Lab at Yale University came up with possible sites for experimental rain gardens to deal with the extra water in a more natural way, allowing it to be slowly absorbed into the ground after flooding.

University of Connecticut students built the rain garden, the city of Bridgeport donated materials, machinery and many plants after construction.

The initial (2011, 2012) wetland plant community failed due to inundation with storm surge from Long Island Sound, brought by Hurricane Sandy in 2012.