Art: Jig-Stone Puzzle

Back in the fabulous ’20s, when William Randolph Hearst was collecting art, he casually bought a whole Spanish monastery one day. The 811-year-old building was dismantled and each statue and block of stone duly numbered. Then they were packed into 10,742 crates (made in a specially built sawmill) and sent 21 miles (on a specially built railroad) to a seaport, where freighters carried them to New York. Somehow Hearst never got around to playing with his new $500,000 building blocks. They sat in a Bronx warehouse until after his death last year, then were sold (for about $60,000) to a group of New York and Cincinnati businessmen. Last week the new owners had glad news: the work of fitting the jig-stone puzzle is under way at North Miami Beach, Fla., and the monastery should be open for business — as a tourist attraction — about a year from now.