Landmark beach cottage sets sail

BARNEGAT LIGHT, N.J. - With television helicopters fluttering overhead, a documentary film crew working on the ground, and a contingent of Long Beach Island locals calling the play-by-play, this area's most famous beach cottage rolled gingerly onto an ocean barge yesterday, en route to a new home on the north shore of Long Island, N.Y.

Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown's little Lieb House became the SS Lieb.

In all his years of practicing architecture with his wife, the 83-year-old Venturi has probably never had a media experience quite like the one that began unfolding at 7:30 a.m. in the sandy yard of the Barnegat Light marina. Venturi and Scott Brown, who are Philadelphia's most important living architects, stood by as a swarm of journalists recorded an unprecedented effort to rescue one of their earliest, and most modest, projects, a 1967 Shore house designed for a wealthy Philadelphia couple.

"It's like watching one of your children go off somewhere," Venturi marveled as a team from Wolfe House & Building Movers in Bernville, Pa., installed metal ramps in preparation for transferring the house, which sat on a large, motorized dolly.

The two-story, four-bedroom cottage had left its original pile foundations in late January after a developer purchased the property as a tear-down. Jim Venturi, the architects' son, had been scrambling since then to obtain permits for the house to be floated up to Glen Cove, N.Y.

The complex transfer from land to sea at times required almost military logistics. The Wolfe team had to build the equivalent of a makeshift bridge to roll the 70-ton house onto the barge. The team will construct an even more complex set of ramps when the house arrives today at the Glen Cove property of Debbie Sarnoff and Robert Gotkin. While the Barnegat pier was only a couple of feet below the level of the barge, its new home in Glen Cove is on a high bank above the Long Island Sound.

Yesterday's operation brought out a couple dozen of the island's stalwart year-rounders, unfazed by the unseasonably cold air.

"This is the most exciting thing to happen in Barnegat this winter," said Bill Cornell, who once worked with Venturi on the renovation of the Barnes Foundation.

"Bravo" came the shouts when the house rolled to a controlled stop in the middle of the barge.

The extraordinary move is costing the Glen Cove couple the price of a small house, around $200,000, just for transport, the younger Venturi said. They will probably spend another six figures on restoration.

But when it's over, they will be the owners of a noted work of midcentury architecture, a charming small house with a sailboat window and a large graphic number 9 next to the front door. The Lieb House is considered a watershed in Venturi's career because it shows him moving further away from the strict International Style of Le Corbusier. The gray-and-white shingled box is featured frequently in architecture curriculums.

The little beach shack should also be a genial companion for the Glen Cove couple's own Venturi-designed house, known as the Kalpakjian House, after the original owner. While the Lieb house is a tidy box, the 1986 Kalpakjian is oval and includes references to classic seaside architecture. They plan to use Lieb as a guest house.

Although getting the house onto the barge was a complicated ordeal, the 95-mile trip to Glen Cove turned out to be surprisingly simple - so simple that Jim Venturi decided to delay departure until 6 p.m. yesterday. That way - if the barge makes the expected 4 to 12 m.p.h. - his parents' design will sail under Manhattan's bridge at the height of the morning rush hour, providing further opportunities for TV crews.

It also is a lucky break for Jim Venturi, who is making a documentary about his parents' celebrated career, Learning From Bob & Denise. By the time the house is hoisted onto waiting piles in Glen Cove today, there should be no shortage of good footage.