House Moved, or, Lieb On The Lam
February 12, 2009
The Lieb House, a seaside home on New Jersey’s Long Beach Island, was completed in 1969. As one of our firm’s earliest works, it’s both a piece of architectural history and a reflection of its time and context.
It’s an ordinary little house with conventional elements used in unexpected and exciting ways. It incorporates big elements, like a stair that starts out the width of the house and gradually narrows -- and uses unconventional elements explicitly, as in the big round window that looks like a 1930s radio speaker. Another unconventional element is the placement of the living room on the second floor to allow good views of the ocean. It’s a little house with a big scale, at home in its context but also strange and different from the houses around it.
In 2009, the property was sold, and the structure was threatened with demolition to make way for a new, larger house. James Venturi, son of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, led the effort to relocate the structure to another ocean-front location -- Glen Cove, NY, to be added to the site of another house by VSBA. Many of the elements which made the house appropriate for its original location -- like the views from the living room -- will benefit it in a new seaside location.On Friday, March 13, 2009, the Lieb House was transported to its new home in Glen Cove, NY. The move -- which was incredibly complicated and involved a series of logistical, physical, and regulatory challenges -- generated a great amount of media and public interest.
Thank you to everyone who followed this process, came out to see the move, and supported the extraordinary evolution of this little house.