Jigsaw Puzzle

One of the biggest and most expensive items in the vast art collection of the late William Randolph Hearst was a complete 12th century Spanish monastery that once stood in Sacramenia, a village near Segovia. In his imperious way, Hearst bought the monastery, had it dismantled stone by stone, and shipped (in 35,000 pieces weighing 2,500 tons) to the U.S. It cost Hearst more than half a million dollars and ten years of effort to get his treasure home. By that time, even Hearst was reluctant to spend the additional sum it would cost to rebuild the monastery on his San Simeon estate. Instead, he stored it in a warehouse in The Bronx, and there Sacramenia's monastery languished, one of the most monumental white elephants in art history.

Last week, thanks to the enterprise of two bustling Ohio businessmen, the monastery was finally put together on U.S. soil. In North Miami Beach, Fla., workmen fitted the last of the 35,000 stones in place, and the two businessmen, E. Raymond Moss and William S. Edgemon of Cincinnati, got ready to open the monastery to sightseers. Moss and Edgemon had bought the stones at a bargain after Hearst's death in 1951, and packed them off to Florida. In the summer of 1952, a small army of architects, masons and other workmen started the laborious job of unpacking and reassembling the stones on a 20-acre site just outside Miami. They worked from charts prepared by Hearst's dismantlers in Sacramenia; each stone bore a number corresponding to a position on the charts. The master mason who supervised the job called it "the greatest jigsaw puzzle in history."

In its new setting the monastery looks much as it did when it was first built by order of King Alfonso VII in 1141--a low structure of age-mellowed limestone with a cloistered courtyard. Inside are three fine statues--of Christ, Alfonso VII and Alfonso VIII--taken from the original monastery in Sacramenia. Moss and Edgemon hope that enough tourists will pay admissions (probably $1.85 a head) to return them their investment and a long-term profit. Just to make sure, they have also added a few nonmonastic touches: a wishing well in the courtyard, piped music broadcast from a loudspeaker concealed in a tree. And even before the restored monastery was officially opened, several prospective brides had asked to be married in the chapter house of the monastery.

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