SLIP SLIDIN' AWAY
Paul Simon's Li cottage teetering
A cottage on Paul Simon’s Montauk estate is about to and fall off a cliff into troubled water. The “You Can Call Me Al” superstars singer secured emergency approval to temporarily move the sin-gle-story abode, which is just 10 feet from the edge of an eroding, 65-foot-tall bluff. “It was teetering on the edge,” said Lisa D’ Andrea, an envi-ronmentalist in the East Hampton Planning Department, which is reviewing the application to move the home permanently 80 feet back from the abyss.
An unidentified relative of the diminutive hit-maker lives in the house, which stands on the same four-acre meadow as Simon’s $10.5 million mansion.
Other cliff dwellers include Robert De Niro and TV host Dick Cavett. A nearby compound that once belonged to Andy Warhol recently sold for $50 million.
The cottage, built in 1947, stands on the site of a former World War II bunker and might even be made from the leftover cement of the razed structure.
“There was quite a nice area of land in front of the house in the ’50s and ’60s and progressively it eroded, sometimes at little nibbling rates slowly year after year,” said Wendi Goldsmith, a consulting geologist on the moving project. “And every once in a while, a big chunk went.”
The bluffs are glacial deposits under constant attack by the surf. The compound is just a few miles from the historic Montauk Lighthouse, which has been threatened by erosion for decades.
Simon once even joined efforts to save the beacon. In 1990, he played a benefit concert dubbed Bluff Aid.