In saving a historic building, relocation is usually the preservation strategy of last resort. But after repeated flooding at the original site in Millstone, New Jersey, architects and preservationists Lawrence and Sharon Tarantino felt that they had no other choice but to find someone who would purchase their Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian home and move it to higher ground.

That higher ground turned out to be 1,260 miles away. After a prolonged international search, the Taratinos sold the Bachman-Wilson house in 2013 to Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton for the campus of her Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. The reconstructed house now sits a stone’s throw away from the Moshe Safdie-designed museum and will open to the public November 11.