UNION BEACH – Twelve years after their hollowed-out yellow house became a global symbol of superstorm Sandy’s devastation, Jon and Meridith Zois, along with their 8-year-old daughter Violet, are moving into a new house on the property, crossing the finish line at the end of an exhausting journey.
Since they evacuated to escape the storm surge in October 2012, the Zoises got married, had a daughter, acquired the property from their family, and navigated obstacles from financing to inspections before finally moving in.
“Between working a full-time job that requires a lot of mental energy and all of this, if I wasn’t already gray, I would be very gray,” said Jon Zois, 46, standing in the new kitchen the week before Thanksgiving.
The Zoises invited The Asbury Park Press to follow them this year as their new home took shape — from empty land that once was the site of an iconic image to a 2,300-square-foot modular home set high on pilings driven deep into the ground.
Watch the video above to see more about the rebuilding process.
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The project adds to a post-Sandy transformation in Union Beach, a working-class Bayshore town that has seen an influx of new homes selling for as much as $1 million.
And it marks a milestone for Jon, a car salesman, and Meridith, a social worker, who unintentionally found the spotlight when photographers came across their home after Sandy. The home, painted yellow, stood out like few other images. It was a solitary structure, virtually cut in half and supported on one leg, as if defying the laws of physics.
The 150-year-old house, dubbed “The Princess Cottage,” had survived plenty of stories over the years. Jon’s father and aunt bought it in 1994 and rented it to Jon and Meridith in April 2012, shortly before the couple got married. Six months later, with Superstorm Sandy bearing down, they were forced to evacuate to a nearby hotel.
In the storm’s aftermath, photos of the house beamed worldwide. Jon and Meridith started picking up the pieces, moving first to an apartment before eventually returning to Union Beach, into another home across Front Street that also was owned by their family.
They returned to work, but wherever they went, they couldn’t escape the photo. They saw it on the side of a city bus in Los Angeles during their honeymoon. They saw it in social media memes. They saw it on advertisements for insurance companies.
“Honestly, looking back on it, you have to keep moving on,” Meridith Zois, 42, said in September. “What’s the point of sitting and wallowing in it? Nothing is going to change it. It’s not going to rebuild the house. So kind of just, like, all right, what are we going to do from here?”
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It would take an uncommon amount of patience. They waited for years as Jon’s father and aunt debated what to do with it. They took over ownership after Jon’s father died in 2021. They lined up financing, fended off a bid by Union Beach to take it over through eminent domain, hired Brick-based builder Zarrilli Homes, watched as workers pieced the home together like it was a giant Lego project, ordered new furniture, fought with town hall over regulations, and, finally, passed inspection.
Meridith Zois dubbed the $700,000 project “The Princess Fortress.” In November, she and Zarrilli Homes manager Patrick Bottazzi sprinkled glitter onto the still-hot driveway and watched as pavers rolled over it.
The new house has a Pacific blue and white facade. It has a kitchen that looks out to a living area with a fireplace. It has an elevator to take the family from the garage to the living area. And it has an expansive deck with an unvarnished view of the protective sand dunes and beach. Beyond that, they can see the bay, the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, the lights of Coney Island and downtown Manhattan.
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The Zoises envisioned plenty of room for a Christmas tree in the family room. They pictured Fourth of July gatherings with views of fireworks displays from the Bayshore to New York City. And they were reasonably confident that their new home would fair far better in a storm than their old one.
The hoops and hurdles of the past decade briefly faded away one September morning, when Violet, born four years after Sandy, scoped out her new bedroom and playroom that were coming together nicely.
Meridith asked her what she was looking forward to the most.
“The elevator,” Violet said.
Michael L. Diamond is a business reporter at the Asbury Park Press. He has been writing about the New Jersey economy and health care industry since 1999. He can be reached at mdiamond@gannettnj.com.
This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Iconic Union Beach home torn in half by Sandy replaced 12 years later