Wright house but wrong place

27 February 2013 - 02:07 By Mark Hughes
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The riverside home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright
The riverside home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright

Sharon and Lawrence Tarantino have the ultimate house-moving dilemma: how to move one of America's foremost architectural gems out of a flood plain and rebuild it in another state, or even a different country.

The couple, who live in Millstone, central New Jersey, are trying to move their home, piece by piece, to a new location which could end up being as far away as Italy.

Their four-bedroom riverside home is one of only four in their state and one of 270 in the US to have been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, considered by experts to be the "greatest American architect".

But its location on the River Millstone means it has been flooded regularly in recent years.

Any severe storm, a frequent occurrence in New Jersey, sees the house engulfed by several metres of floodwater which, in turn, prompts expensive repairs for the Tarantinos.

Now an Italian architect, Paolo Bulletti, has emerged with a plan to move the house to Fiesole, near Florence, an Italian town where Wright lived in the early 1900s. Wright retreated to the area to mend a broken heart. After a year in Italy, he returned to the US and became one the world' s most renowned architects.

Sharon Tarantino said moving it to Italy was the "romantic solution", given Wright's connection to the area.

"The flooding has become worse. We have to do what is best for the house," she said.

"We want to know that it has a future if we are going to go to the trouble of dismantling it and moving it. We feel that wherever it goes, it has to have a connection to Wright." - ©The Daily Telegraph

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