Monday, February 02, 2009

Venturi's Lieb House Begins its Journey

They say every journey begins with a first step. But in the case of Robert Venturi's Lieb House it started with a slow roll through the streets of Long Beach Island on Friday. The Inquirer photographer Akira Suwa caught the grand sweep of the momentous event in this photo, which appeared on the front page of Saturday's paper. The house, as I reported last week, will eventually make its way by barge to a new home in Glen Cove. But for the moment, it's stuck in limbo at the 16th Street marina, while it waits for its papers to come through.

The house's adoptive owners, Debbie Sarnoff and Robert Gotkin, say they hope to obtain a zoning permit for the house within the next two weeks, maybe even sometime this week. Incidentally, this isn't the only house on the move. Check out this video of an 1880s house being slid across Minnesota's White Bear Lake.