Fate of Venturi Shore House Uncertain

The staff in the Manayunk office of Venturi Scott Brown & Associates are holding their breath, waiting to learn the fate of Robert Venturi's well-known Lieb House on Long Beach Island. The 1967 house, which sits on a sizable lot in Loveladies, has apparently been sold as a tear down. But VSBA's Dan McCoubrey told me negotiations are afoot to move the boxy structure to a new location. The irony, of course, is that the house would lose its specific seaside context, a quality that it is so essential to Venturi's work in general and this house in particular. (See my recent piece on Episcopal Academy.)

This little house looks so modest and inoffensive today, particularly given all the bloated beach houses that have sprung up on Long Beach Island in recent years, covering every available inch of the building lots. But in 1967, what repelled neighbors and delighted architects was the design's boxy form and supergraphics (remember that word?). Venturi was already becoming well known for his writings and for Mother's House in Chestnut Hill, but he still hadn't built very much. The construction of Lieb House "showed that Venturi was not going to be a mere historical pasticheur," recalled Penn professor David Brownlee, who is author of the most comprehensive survey of Venturi Scott Brown's work.
While Mother's House riffed on our cultural perceptions of what a house should be, and was full of historical references, the Lieb house was assertively modern. Brownlee says it clearly rejected that "housey appearance" of Mother's House. So, instead of eaves and pediments, you get a flat roof and ribbon windows. The lineage is Corbusier rather than Hansel & Gretel.

In an interesting New York Times period piece from 1970 by Rita Reif (try here), the Liebs engage in a spirited discussion about which was uglier: their neighbor's pretentious shore houses or Venturi's faux-ugly shore house. Venturi, of course, has always used the word "ugly" to describe his brand of ordinary, seemingly vernacular, unheroic design. Here's what the architect himself had to say on the subject:

"We had to recognize that it was in a very ugly and banal environment, "Venturi said. "This house is purposely not pretty, not refined, not sensitive, not delicate, not full of high-fashion architectural articulations of little wings popping out and other lovely structural refinements. Anything else would have made the landscape look worse than it is."

The story goes on to say that the Lieb's neighbors stopped talking to them soon after they built the house (for $31,000! On a lot that cost $20,000!) For some reason, Venturi's love of bold signs - iconography - seems to upset people more than anything else about his work. The Liebs sold it a short while later to the Ellmans, who maintained the place intact, keeping the bold No. 9 next to the front door.