Standing in front of her neighbor’s light blue cottage on West New Jersey Avenue, Lee Hirtle cradles something precious: a meticulously detailed scale model of Dan D’Agostino and Andrea Vecchione’s summer home. But this isn’t just any miniature house. It’s a piece of Long Beach Island’s architectural history, lovingly crafted by her father nearly three decades ago.
In the 1990s, Lee’s father, Albert Charles Pleskus, known simply as “Al” to his friends and neighbors, embarked on an extraordinary…
Subscribe to keep reading
This story is from our archive. Get your SandPaper Annual Pass for access to our digital archive, plus everything else a pass includes. Details below.
Annual Pass — $18 Details
365-day access to:
- The complete SandPaper digital archive (stories date back to 2012).
- Full photo galleries from our photographers.
- The entire catalog of SandPaper games, puzzles and quizzes.
How it works
- Enter your email below and click to pay the one-time $18. Card details are entered on Stripe’s secure page.
- You’re in straight away — no password to create, and nothing to set up or manage.
- You stay signed in. If you’re ever signed out, or you read on a new phone or computer, we’ll email you a code to get you back in.
- Never auto-renews. Your pass is good for one year. We will email you when it expires so you can renew if you’d like.
See our site policies for more information.
Already a subscriber? We’ll email a code to get you back in.
