Castles made of sand

The Vineyard Gazette has been reporting for several months about the Schifter house along the eroding shores of Wasque Point on Chappaquiddick.

Now The Wall Street Journal has picked up the story with a front-page story in its Mansion section.

"There's a dramatic scene currently under way on Martha's Vineyard. To keep their 8,300-square-foot house from plunging off an eroding bluff, the owners are moving it back 275 feet. The estimated cost: at least $1 million.

"The stone and wood-shingled house, built in 2004, has seven bedrooms, seven bathrooms and a massive basement with a bowling alley, according to public records. All of that—plus a 1,814-square-foot guesthouse and a garage—is going, much of it to the 4-acre property next door that the owners bought in January for $4.5 million for that purpose.

"The move involves digging underneath the basement, moving the structure through a trench and then refilling the hole with soil. Still, that pales in comparison to what the house cost to build: The current appraised value of the buildings and the land is $7.6 million, but contractors put the cost of rebuilding the main house alone at around $10 million.

" 'If I'd spent all that money on the house, I'd be moving it, too,' says Edward Vincent Jr., chairman of the Edgartown Conservation Commission." (Owner Richard Schifter, a partner at private-equity firm TPG Capital, declined to comment.)

As Jimi Hendrix sang, "And so castles made of sand fall in the sea, eventually."