Tall order for architects: Can elevated Jersey Shore homes keep their charm?

Saturday, October 26, 2013 Last updated: Saturday October 26, 2013, 10:25 PM

AMY NEWMAN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Architect Verity Frizzell at a Mantoloking house that has been elevated above flood level. The homeowners raised it more than required so they could include parking underneath.

AMY NEWMAN / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

A home on East Avenue in the Ocean County borough of Bay Head is being elevated to protect it from future storms.

For the Jersey Shore, the only way forward is up.

A year after Superstorm Sandy roared into the Shore, homeowners and builders are elevating homes so that living spaces will be high enough to allow floodwaters to wash underneath. The change is being driven by new federal flood-insurance maps, and the result will inevitably transform the character of the 130-mile Shore.

This is the future. Its something thats going to be happening up and down the coast, says Jack Purvis, an Allenwood architect who is president of the American Institute of Architects New Jersey chapter. One of his home elevations, in Bay Head, is being featured on the current season of the television show This Old House.

The fabric of the Shore is going to change, says Michael Scro of Z-Plus Architects in Allendale, which is working on a house elevation and renovation in Mantoloking.

The changes are starting already, as anyone who drives along the Shore will find. A giant, century-old house stands on laddered wooden columns, looming over its beachfront site in Bay Head. A tiny cottage squats atop tall pillars in Ocean Beach. A house stands high on a blank, one-story cinder-block foundation in Seaside Heights.

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Tall order for architects: Can elevated Jersey Shore homes keep their charm?