Classic cottage may soon sail away

There's no sign yet of any commotion at the deceptively humble beach shack that Philadelphia architect Robert Venturi designed almost 40 years ago overlooking the sea at Barnegat Light. An immense black number 9 still flanks the front door, and a whimsical sailboat-shaped window still curves from a side facade.

But if ocean winds and human whims cooperate, this much-admired early design by Philadelphia's most important living architect could soon leave its familiar moorings and set sail on an odyssey that will take it up the New Jersey coast, past Manhattan's glittering skyline, under the Brooklyn Bridge, through the treacherous currents of Hell's Gate, and then on to Glen Cove, N.Y. - all in an effort to save the wood-frame shore house from a developer's wrecking ball.

For the moment, however, the unpretentious summer place known as the Lieb House remains in a frantic race against the clock.

The new owner in Barnegat Light, who acquired 9 E. 30th St. as a tear-down, wants the building off the property by settlement on Monday. Barnegat Light officials have agreed to let the boxy, two-toned beach house travel through the streets of Long Beach Island to a bayside marina, where it will be able to catch a barge for the north shore of New York's Long Island.

But authorities in Glen Cove have yet to give the Lieb House permission to land. There is still no contract with a barge company capable of moving the house through the challenging waters off New Jersey. Nor has the U.S. Coast Guard signed off on the voyage.

"It's still not a done deal," said Jim Venturi, son of Manayunk-based architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. "Things that normally take weeks to organize, we're trying to do in a few days."

Jim Venturi is thankful, though, that he has secured a new site for the 1967 cottage, which is a fixture of architectural curriculums across the country. With New York architect Frederic Schwartz acting as matchmaker, Bob and Debbie Sarnoff of Glen Cove were persuaded to find room on their property for the 30-by-37-foot house.

It wasn't a particularly hard sell, Schwartz acknowledged.

Because the Lieb House was Robert Venturi's second completed commission, the first after his celebrated Mother's House in Chestnut Hill, it is historically important. In his design for a well-known Philadelphia couple, Judith and Nathaniel Lieb, Venturi seems to be trying to make peace between modernism's strict geometries and his interest in more fanciful, historical references.

"It's a terrific little house, with lots going on," said David Brownlee, a University of Pennsylvania professor who has written about Venturi's work.

Fans of the house could not have asked for a better site. Not only do the Sarnoffs live in a Venturi-designed home - the Kalpakian House - but their property overlooks the water, just as the Barnegat Light site does.

"That means it will still be happy," said Robert Venturi, whose work has always been inseparable from its context.

But while the Barnegat location was crammed in among Long Beach Island's bloated McMansions, the modest Jersey beach house will reside In New York on land that once was part of J.P. Morgan's Gilded Age estate. Instead of gazing at the Atlantic Ocean, it will enjoy spectacular views of Manhattan and the Empire State Building. The Sarnoffs, who could not be reached, intend to use the Lieb as a guest house, Schwartz said.

The only problem is getting it to Glen Cove.

The house is too high to truck on the highway without encountering power lines. As Schwartz explained, "You can't just have a house arrive at the dock." He spent a day in Glen Cove trying to get permissions, and noted: "The house can't set sail until it has a zoning approval and a building approval."

All that can be accomplished - in time. "What's difficult is the speed [at which] we have to do this. That's the pressure," Schwartz said. "But it's going to be phenomenal when it goes under the Brooklyn Bridge."

Indeed. While the world has long gazed in admiration at the architecture of the Manhattan waterfront, it's unlikely that any architect has had a building paraded up the East River.

Assuming permission is granted, the Lieb House is expected to glide into the mouth of the Hudson River near the tip of Wall Street, then move past Roosevelt Island, to the Throgs Neck Bridge and the famously swirling waters of Hell's Gate, a journey that usually takes several hours for a sailboat to navigate.

"If it happens, it's going to be pretty incredible," Schwartz said.

It's been barely a month since Jim Venturi learned that the Lieb House's current owner, the Ellman family, had sold the modernist cottage to Ziman Development. The company coveted the property, not for its architectural pedigree, but for its relatively large lot, now a rarity on Long Beach Island's dense grid.

Because Ziman is eager to replace the Lieb House with a much bigger structure, the company welcomed Venturi's offer to move the building, as long as he had it off the site by closing day.

He began working the phones. He enlisted Schwartz, who started his career at the offices of Venturi Scott Brown & Associates and is the author of the definitive book on Mother's House. Schwartz, who knew the Sarnoffs, recalled that they were "big fans of Venturi's work."

Initially, Barnegat Light officials were worried about getting the house off the site.

"They wanted to go over the sand dunes, cross the beach and load it onto a barge," Mayor Kirk Larson said. "You need perfect weather to beach a barge. I was afraid that if a nor'easter came over, that house would be washed down to Loveladies."

The town insisted that Wolfe House and Building Co. take the house through the streets to a marina. The company will begin today to jack up the house and slip steel rollers under the foundation, said Kendal Siegrist, a manager. By Friday, it should reach the parking lot in Barnegat's marina.

How long it will sit there is anyone's guess. "Maybe several days," Siegrist suggested.

Jim Venturi, who is making a documentary about his parents, will film the event.

Gail Wetmore, Barnegat's administrator, said she never knew the house was such a celebrity. "We didn't even know it was important till this whole thing started," she marveled.