not technically Cocoa Beach, but one of my primary memories is of this building….
Its hard to realize, since it’s not next to anything else of scale —but it’s an over 50 story building...
This is from a web page i just came across ~
Three-and-a-half miles distant from Launch Complex 39, engineered to handle the awesome power of Saturn liftoffs, a 525-foot high structure was built to assemble the mammoth boosters. This structure, now tagged the Vehicle Assembly Building, towered above the Florida landscape. It was capable of erecting four of the monstrous Saturn V boosters simultaneously. To move a fully stacked Saturn V to its launch pad, a giant diesel-powered crawler transporter would lumber across a specially-built roadway. A Launch Control Center served as the brains of the Moonport, directing mission support, fuel loading, and launch of the powerful Saturn launch vehicles.
Construction activities lead to an operational Launch Complex 39 by 1967. Twelve piloted and unpiloted Saturn V/Apollo missions rocketed away from Kennedy Space Center between 1967 and 1972.