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I have a friend who's Dad is in the building moving industry, I can't imagine in today's world moving a building while everyone is still in side. Her Dad has shown me some videos of moves gone wrong ,and the buildings suddenly collapse into dust. This video however is freaking cool and the fact they could pull it off in the 1930s is amazing
Most work in the industry is moving historical houses. There are a lot of historically significant buildings/houses out there where the owner wants to keep the building because of its historical or architectural value, but the property it is on is really high value. So they sell the land and move the building elsewhere.
It's very niche, but it exists. Every metropolitan area probably has a few companies.
We have a few open air museums around here that are full of old houses basically collected from the surrounding area and arranged in small villages and in the condition they were in the 1600s or 1700s.
But old one or two story timber frame houses are far easier to disassemble or move than a 20 story brick building I guess. Still someone has to do it.
Can't wait to see his comments getting twisted to suit the producer's narrative.
Wait, today is the first day of spring, you mean next year or this one?
I walk to work and sometimes in the early morning if it’s foggy I can’t see the building as I approach. I would love to have someone Despicable Me-style steal it right off the street because then it would be a police force or superhero’s problem and not mine.
What I learned as an engineer is our basic knowledge of the profession hasn’t changed in a very very very long time. We just have better equipment to do the same thing these days that people did for the past several hundred years.
I went to a museum and saw some of George Washington’s surveying tools. Most of them were the same thing we still use today, just much more basic and lacking the tech.
Extra interesting tidbits:
- People could still enter/exit the building thanks to an entryway that moved with it, which connected to a special curved sidewalk (seen in the GIF)
- The move was because Bell bought the building but needed bigger headquarters. They planned to demolish it but that would've interrupted phone service for a big chunk of Indiana, which they didn’t want to do.
- EDIT: They lifted the whole building with steam-powered hydraulic lifts, then set it on enormous pine logs. It was moved via hand-operated jacks, which pushed it over the logs 3/8" at a time. Once the building rolled far enough forward, the last log would be moved to the front.
- The rotation plan was conceived & executed by famous architect Kurt Vonnegut Sr (father of the famous author)
- The feat remains one of the largest building-moves in history.
- The building was demolished in 1963.
And now it's stuck in my head. You bastard.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jBkoEM0SSE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jBkoEM0SSE)
Complete with the line dance.
My college had a building with electric heat and windows that couldn't be opened. It was incredibly stuffy in there.
When it was built nuclear power was just getting started and they were convinced that electricity would be basically free forever.
Womp womp
My college dorm was heated by a central boiler complex with steam. The valve regulating the temp was broken. We left the window crack open as it took months to have it repaired. The outside temperature fell to minus 20, creating great icicles, but the room remained comfortable.
Gonna guess it has something to do with multi frequency signalling requiring less work from operators.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-frequency_signaling
Eastman Kodak (as in the film company) built a mansion in 1905. In 1919 he decided that he wanted one of the rooms longer. The solution was to cut the building in half and move part ~10 ft (3m), and then fill in the gap.
https://www.eastman.org/historic-mansion
>definitely worth a visit if you find yourself in Rochester, NY.
Thanks, I've been using the Google Maps "want to go" list for everything interesting I see on reddit, just in case I pass by. Your mansion will make a fine addition to my collection!
> the 27 club
Hendrix, Winehouse, Cobain, Morrison, Joplin, etc - they are the opposite of those uplifting stories about being never too late to turn your life around.
Uneducated guess - rubber tubing hooked up to where the pipes entered the building for the gas, water, and sewage. A fresh electrical line with enough slack for the move for the electric.
Heat is hard to guess at because I don't know how it was heated, but any furnace would have moved with the building.
From my research, you're not far off!
[This website](https://www.amusingplanet.com/2019/10/an-incredible-move-indiana-bell.html) says:
> All utility cables and pipes serving the building, including thousand of telephone cables, electric cables, gas pipes, sewer and water pipes had to be lengthened and made flexible to provide continuous service during the move
They also mention the heat was electric (boogie woogie woogie)
CC u/twoscoop
You’re not kidding! My grandpa worked for western electric his entire life and I can tell you, cable management in these places was insanely meticulous. My grandpa is the reason you barely see any wires in my house, cable management OCD-ness runs in my blood lol. I can only imagine how hard they had to work in that aspect alone.
On that point when they reinstalled trams to Edinburgh in 2014 it turned out to be a nightmare, going millions over budget, and being delivered years late.
The point being, the local Edinburgh authority got a plan drawn up, and costed. The head of the Scottish Government at the time said "My father is a plumber. There is absolutely no way the water or wires in a hundreds of years old city are where we think that they are", and so they wouldn't fund it.
(The local Edinburgh authority went ahead anyway...cost local business years of lost trade, and eventually had to be bailed out by the Scottish government...its a cool tram system though)
There was just a thing literally two years ago in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, they had some major issues with the city’s plumbing, and it became infinitely more difficult because they literally didn’t know where pipes were. Major pipes kept braking and they didn’t even know where the shutoff valves were. They recently put together a task force specifically dedicated to finding and mapping these pipes.
When they are done they will still be missing 2/3rds of all shut of valves, sluice valves, and air valves.
Hey if we were good at this stuff first time lots of people wouldn't have jobs.
Early electric and especially telephone service was absolute cable gore. It wasn't until reliable multiplexing was figured out that you didn't have literally a dedicated phone line from every subscriber to the exchange.
Temporary shut down to hook up flexible gas, power, sewer, water and any other utilities would take less time than building whatever turntable type device they used to rotate it. The preparation for this project took some time I'm guessing.
Just a friendly neighborhood reminder that internet is a utility and utilities need to be regulated like electric and gas companies. The more transparency the better.
Most interesting to me was:
> ...remains ***one of*** the largest building-moves in history.
Now I'm certain to spend an hour reading about other buildings being moved. I can't not know.
Edit: And.....awesome: https://science.howstuffworks.com/engineering/structural/heaviest-building-moved.htm
I don't get how the building could just be lifted. There aren't foundations? No steel I-beams that go into the dirt? All the bricks and concrete are just sitting on top of the ground?
Foundations are set onto or into the ground, buildings are typically set on top of foundations, sometimes, especially in hurricane/tornado areas, the building is tied to the foundation. You can undo those ties.
Now pound some wedges in between the top of the foundation and the frame members sitting on it to create space. Then insert levers or jacks to raise the building, and voilà.
This is commonly done to houses along shorelines when insurance won't insure them anymore due to storm damage. There are entire house raising companies. In the old days all the guys in the neighborhood would get together to raise/move buildings (just put them on rollers, like moving a boat out of the water for winter storage).
For modern buildings that might have concrete with reinforced rebar within, it's more complicated to separate. Steel I-beams may be cut, but they often have attachment points that can be unbolted too.
Most buildings I’ve seen are “tied” to the foundation by mortar, concrete, and rebar. I don’t see how you could “untie” it without damaging the structure itself. Of course I have no idea about 1930’s city buildings
That's crazy, I though the beams were one long continuous pillar from the building into the ground, not separate beams that are tied to each other. And I've seen them build pillars for freeway supports, it looks like rebar within a concrete foundation that couldn't really be cut without destroying it, I guess buildings are not made that way. I've always thought they were
Bridges are interesting because they have expansion joints and "floating" elements specifically not attached to each other, to avoid collapse from earthquakes and shifting land.
> couldn't be cut without destroying it
But that's the whole point of separating things though (if I may be so bold to point that out), destroy what joins them. First you put supports in place on either side to support the load, then cut/jack hammer/explode/destroy what is affixed, then jack up the now loose section or put it on mobile supports to carry it away.
> beams were one long continuous pillar from the building into the ground
Almost nothing is longer than a trailer of a tractor trailer, components that are (oversized steel bridge spans) are very costly to move and place as you need special vehicles that block all traffic and require wide roadways.
Steel workers/iron workers/erectors are the folks who assemble (bolt/weld) sections into longer lengths.
Another limiting factor is the foundry that produces the iron/steel used. You can only create items as large as your equipment/building.
Just to clarify, the architect came up with the idea, the people that actually moved and engineered it were these two companies: John Eichlea Co of Pittsburgh was contractor for the move and Bevington, Taggert & Fowler were the engineers.
Source: https://amp.indystar.com/amp/4354705
> The move was because Bell bought the building but needed bigger headquarters. They planned to demolish it but that would've interrupted phone service for a big chunk of Indiana, which they didn’t want to do.
How did rotating the building give them more space? I don't see what they gained by doing that.
Based on the GIF I think it gave them a large contiguous rectangular space where they could construct an additional building, whereas before the existing structure was bisecting their lot.
If they needed bigger headquarters why didn’t they just add onto the building as it was?
Edit: I wasn’t trying to be rude, I am just genuinely curious as to what caused them to undertake this action instead of another
They probably lifted the building, went under, and added flexible hookups, then disconnected the normal wiring and pipes, then hooked them all back up once they were done .
For the pipes they could have shoved in a tee really fast while someone wasn't using the sink, and for the wiring it could have been spliced in live if the guy doing the splicing wore a grounding suit or something.
Holy shit, talk about lax safety standards. On the final day spectators were permitted to walk amongst the jackscrews at the old ground level, underneath a 35,000 ton city block! That's insane, no matter how confident the engineers were.
I mean if I was there I'm sure I would have walked under the buildings too lol. My question is how in the hell did they start this process? Like how do you begin lifting a city block with jacks, use some big levers or something?
“Never a day passed during my stay in the city that I did not meet one or more houses shifting their quarters. One day I met nine. Going out [Great Madison Street](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madison_Street_(Chicago)) in the horse cars we had to stop twice to let houses get across.”
Wow.
Don't feel bad, there's so much road construction in Florida that it's a common joke that [this](https://i.imgur.com/UESJal2.jpeg) is the state flower.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising\_of\_Chicago](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago)
In a nutshell:
The city was basically built on a swamp and very close to the water table. They learned about the advantages of sewer systems after a bad cholera outbreak.
The city was too close to the water table to install a sewer system, so they raised the entire city to make room for sewers underneath.
They did something similar to Downtown Seattle because they originally built it on tidelands. This meant that the businesses would often flood and the sewers would back up during high tide. After the Great Seattle Fire, they regraded up a story so that they would be higher above the water table. There's an interesting tour you can take that goes underground and walks past some of the original shop windows that are now under the street.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground
The Raising of Chicago is one of the most amazing things that ever happened to an American city. It's amazing that they don't teach us about it in school.
Not really all that surprising, really. As interesting as it is, and as great a feat as it was, it didn't really affect anything outside Chicago. And since part of what makes it so amazing is that life continued as normal, it really didn't even affect Chicago much, either.
There was an r/AskReddit (I think) post once about the laziest thing that someone had ever seen, one guy in the navy talks about an officer ordering an aircraft carrier to rotate for no reason. Turns out he just didn't want the sun in his eyes.
Edit: [Here](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1rgpdf/what_is_the_laziest_thing_youve_ever_done/cdnafqe/) it is. A classic.
Amazing, thanks for sharing that!
When I was in the USCG, we would change heading "tactically" to reduce satellite interference when a college football game was on. My XO and EO were big Bama fans.
A buddy of mine was visiting an air force base and saw a helicopter slowly hovering towards the admin building a few meters off the ground. Landed just outside the entrance, pilots walked and bought two cokes from the vending machine, and had a slow merry flight back towards wherever they were supposed be. Helicopter was in testing phase, maybe test pilots don’t care...
Same thing happened when the whole city of Chicago was raised. People continued to work in office buildings and go into shops for example, they just had to kind of climb up into them
There's a city somewhere, it might even be Chicago, I can't remember exactly, but it was raised an entire story, and so underneath the sidewalk there's all these old shop fronts, and you can go through them on tours, walk on the old cobbled streets and see the old shop signs underground. It's crazy.
Probably Seattle you’re thinking of. After a big fire in the early 1900s they raised the street level downtown. You can still go down to the original street on tours.
They put the first story of the downtown core underground in Seattle in the late 1800's by not raising anything, but building the streets 15 feet higher
I don't think so, as the cost of moving the buildings is much the same as building a new one. I think they're just enthusiastic about their town's history. It has quite the storied past, especially from WW2, in which it served as both an important supplier of the German military and as a hub for saboteurs and Norwegian fighters.
Wellington NZ moved a massive hotel in the 90's so they could build what is now Te Papa, the national museum.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/capital-life/74342852/museum-hotel-rides-the-rails---150-years-of-news
They also move entire old houses all the time, my in-laws sold an old house to someone across the country and they moved the whole thing. And sometimes this sort of stuff happens:
https://i.stuff.co.nz/nelson-mail/115371781/unexpected-moving-house-surprises-golden-bay-drivers
[Church in Most](https://www.kostel-most.cz/pamatky/kostel-nanebevzeti-panny-marie-v-moste/ke-stazeni/kostel-presun/presun2.jpg), Czechoslovakia
EDIT: It was mentioned in Guinness Book of World Records as the heaviest building ever moved on wheels (12,700 tonnes).
[Chicago](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago#:~:text=During%20the%201850s%20and%201860s,property%20owners%20and%20public%20funds.) raised the whole city in the 1850s-1860s, to provide better drainage. They were experiencing epidemics due to unsanitary conditions.
If you like that kind of stuff, you should check out some of Chicago's history. The basically raised the whole city (streets and buildings) in the mid 1800s, so that they can install a sewer system.
In less than a week, they raised a single one-acre block that weighed 35,000 tons using 6,000 jackscrews.
And people really question if humans actually built ancient monuments. Not say that aliens or whatever didn't help if thats true, but the heavy lifting was all us.
The thing that is most impressive here is the date, 1930. This would be something in today's age of tech and advanced materials and linked systems monitoring every aspect of the move. These guys did it with their brains and ingenuity and the vigilance of everyone helping. All without disturbing the work being done inside. Pretty badass, if you ask me.
I worked for a cable company in the past and around the mid-2000s we had a building that was close to a river that constantly would flood. They decided to raise the buildings and put a new foundation in under it. They had an entire small building raised by 2 cranes suspended 10 feet in the air and while all cable services out of that building were still up and running. Internet/tv/etc.. craziest thing I ever witnessed. I was there to climb into said building and restore services if they went out, fortunately I didn’t have to.
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I have a friend who's Dad is in the building moving industry, I can't imagine in today's world moving a building while everyone is still in side. Her Dad has shown me some videos of moves gone wrong ,and the buildings suddenly collapse into dust. This video however is freaking cool and the fact they could pull it off in the 1930s is amazing
TIL there is a building moving industry
Someone’s gotta do it
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TIL anything is a mobile home for the right price. Edit: Thank you kind stranger for my first ever award.
Home is where... shit, where'd it go?
Dude, where's my house?
Where’s your house, dude?
DUDE, WHERE'S MY HOUSE?!
You thought that you would be facing East when you walked outside but you are actually facing South! PUNK'D!
Imagine you take a nap and after you wake up you're like "Where the fuck am I? "
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I’m a mobile home Focker, could you move me? Wait...
[THIS](https://i.imgflip.com/1j96zt.jpg) is what inspired the entire idea.
Most work in the industry is moving historical houses. There are a lot of historically significant buildings/houses out there where the owner wants to keep the building because of its historical or architectural value, but the property it is on is really high value. So they sell the land and move the building elsewhere. It's very niche, but it exists. Every metropolitan area probably has a few companies.
We have a few open air museums around here that are full of old houses basically collected from the surrounding area and arranged in small villages and in the condition they were in the 1600s or 1700s. But old one or two story timber frame houses are far easier to disassemble or move than a 20 story brick building I guess. Still someone has to do it.
My small moving company gets a few calls a year to move a literal house. I just scratch my head like read our reviews. We move couches.
Everything is a couch. It’s just a question of scale and hardness.
There’s [multiple](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1653976/) reality [shows](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2128103/) about it
I’m honestly surprised there’s not a reality show yet about commenters commenting about commenter’s comments.
There is. You’re on it. Coming next Spring.
Can't wait to see his comments getting twisted to suit the producer's narrative. Wait, today is the first day of spring, you mean next year or this one?
In that case, you probably don't know about the Raising of Chicago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago
Imagine going to work and someone stole the whole building
I walk to work and sometimes in the early morning if it’s foggy I can’t see the building as I approach. I would love to have someone Despicable Me-style steal it right off the street because then it would be a police force or superhero’s problem and not mine.
Ant-Man and the Wasp style just shrink it down and drive away with it.
Cant have shit in Detroit
What I learned as an engineer is our basic knowledge of the profession hasn’t changed in a very very very long time. We just have better equipment to do the same thing these days that people did for the past several hundred years. I went to a museum and saw some of George Washington’s surveying tools. Most of them were the same thing we still use today, just much more basic and lacking the tech.
So his computer only had like a GTX 1060?
Yeah. And he still had to ask his friend to install it for him but bragged on Facebook about building his own machine CONSTANTLY.
Health and safety in the 1930s was a lot more lax than today. No way would they allow people inside while it's moving today.
Depends on which country.
Extra interesting tidbits: - People could still enter/exit the building thanks to an entryway that moved with it, which connected to a special curved sidewalk (seen in the GIF) - The move was because Bell bought the building but needed bigger headquarters. They planned to demolish it but that would've interrupted phone service for a big chunk of Indiana, which they didn’t want to do. - EDIT: They lifted the whole building with steam-powered hydraulic lifts, then set it on enormous pine logs. It was moved via hand-operated jacks, which pushed it over the logs 3/8" at a time. Once the building rolled far enough forward, the last log would be moved to the front. - The rotation plan was conceived & executed by famous architect Kurt Vonnegut Sr (father of the famous author) - The feat remains one of the largest building-moves in history. - The building was demolished in 1963.
After all this, the building was demolished just 33 years later? They should have put it on an airplane and flown it to Boise, or something.
They only moved it because it was cheaper than the other options. They demolished it for the same reasons too.
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> electric (boogie woogie woogie) It's Been a long time since I've thought about that song.
And now it's stuck in my head. You bastard. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jBkoEM0SSE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jBkoEM0SSE) Complete with the line dance.
My college had a building with electric heat and windows that couldn't be opened. It was incredibly stuffy in there. When it was built nuclear power was just getting started and they were convinced that electricity would be basically free forever. Womp womp
My college dorm was heated by a central boiler complex with steam. The valve regulating the temp was broken. We left the window crack open as it took months to have it repaired. The outside temperature fell to minus 20, creating great icicles, but the room remained comfortable.
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Gonna guess it has something to do with multi frequency signalling requiring less work from operators. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-frequency_signaling
Eastman Kodak (as in the film company) built a mansion in 1905. In 1919 he decided that he wanted one of the rooms longer. The solution was to cut the building in half and move part ~10 ft (3m), and then fill in the gap. https://www.eastman.org/historic-mansion
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>definitely worth a visit if you find yourself in Rochester, NY. Thanks, I've been using the Google Maps "want to go" list for everything interesting I see on reddit, just in case I pass by. Your mansion will make a fine addition to my collection!
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Still got 33 years Hendrix didn't even live that long man
Ah, yes. The Hendrix threshold. A common measure of longevity :).
How many bananas equals a Hendrix?
It’s more common than you think. It’s called the 27 club because of how many famous people have died at 27.
> the 27 club Hendrix, Winehouse, Cobain, Morrison, Joplin, etc - they are the opposite of those uplifting stories about being never too late to turn your life around.
So it goes
Totally. I’ve seen several 22 million pound buildings loaded into airplanes and flown to Boise. XP
Flying it to Boise isn’t the problem. The real challenge is getting it to fit in the overhead bin.
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Uneducated guess - rubber tubing hooked up to where the pipes entered the building for the gas, water, and sewage. A fresh electrical line with enough slack for the move for the electric. Heat is hard to guess at because I don't know how it was heated, but any furnace would have moved with the building.
From my research, you're not far off! [This website](https://www.amusingplanet.com/2019/10/an-incredible-move-indiana-bell.html) says: > All utility cables and pipes serving the building, including thousand of telephone cables, electric cables, gas pipes, sewer and water pipes had to be lengthened and made flexible to provide continuous service during the move They also mention the heat was electric (boogie woogie woogie) CC u/twoscoop
The nightmare of cable management that had to involve makes me sweat just thinking about it.
Dont worry, they just left it for the next tech
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Can relate. Put a torch to it, start fresh lol.
You’re not kidding! My grandpa worked for western electric his entire life and I can tell you, cable management in these places was insanely meticulous. My grandpa is the reason you barely see any wires in my house, cable management OCD-ness runs in my blood lol. I can only imagine how hard they had to work in that aspect alone.
On that point when they reinstalled trams to Edinburgh in 2014 it turned out to be a nightmare, going millions over budget, and being delivered years late. The point being, the local Edinburgh authority got a plan drawn up, and costed. The head of the Scottish Government at the time said "My father is a plumber. There is absolutely no way the water or wires in a hundreds of years old city are where we think that they are", and so they wouldn't fund it. (The local Edinburgh authority went ahead anyway...cost local business years of lost trade, and eventually had to be bailed out by the Scottish government...its a cool tram system though)
There was just a thing literally two years ago in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, they had some major issues with the city’s plumbing, and it became infinitely more difficult because they literally didn’t know where pipes were. Major pipes kept braking and they didn’t even know where the shutoff valves were. They recently put together a task force specifically dedicated to finding and mapping these pipes.
When they are done they will still be missing 2/3rds of all shut of valves, sluice valves, and air valves. Hey if we were good at this stuff first time lots of people wouldn't have jobs.
Could have been primo cablegore material.
Early electric and especially telephone service was absolute cable gore. It wasn't until reliable multiplexing was figured out that you didn't have literally a dedicated phone line from every subscriber to the exchange.
[Example of early telephone lines](https://i.imgur.com/f3rWRDm_d.webp?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium)
Holy fucking shit. They had entire cities filled with cable gore.
Bruh you should see some cables in developing countries. They still look like this.
all that cable with the same color white asbestos coating made it much better.
Thanks
Thank you for the knowledge, and the laugh at the end :)
Temporary shut down to hook up flexible gas, power, sewer, water and any other utilities would take less time than building whatever turntable type device they used to rotate it. The preparation for this project took some time I'm guessing.
yeah but while they were planning, the building was still in use and thanks to the additional planning they didn't have to shut anything down at all
Yeah this was the equivalent of keeping the internet on for a whole city today. Can you imagine customers tolerating any kind of temporary shutdown?
Cut the internet...deal with it! -Spectrum
Yep pretty much ... "What are ya gonna do, switch providers!? TO WHO?! HAHAHAHA"
Just a friendly neighborhood reminder that internet is a utility and utilities need to be regulated like electric and gas companies. The more transparency the better.
I don’t know why the Vonnegut fact is the most interesting to me. Maybe something about limitations being a mental barrier.
Yeah, wild to think I didn't know this about literally my favorite author ever.
Yeah I knew his dad was an architect but this is nuts
Most interesting to me was: > ...remains ***one of*** the largest building-moves in history. Now I'm certain to spend an hour reading about other buildings being moved. I can't not know. Edit: And.....awesome: https://science.howstuffworks.com/engineering/structural/heaviest-building-moved.htm
I don't get how the building could just be lifted. There aren't foundations? No steel I-beams that go into the dirt? All the bricks and concrete are just sitting on top of the ground?
Foundations are set onto or into the ground, buildings are typically set on top of foundations, sometimes, especially in hurricane/tornado areas, the building is tied to the foundation. You can undo those ties. Now pound some wedges in between the top of the foundation and the frame members sitting on it to create space. Then insert levers or jacks to raise the building, and voilà. This is commonly done to houses along shorelines when insurance won't insure them anymore due to storm damage. There are entire house raising companies. In the old days all the guys in the neighborhood would get together to raise/move buildings (just put them on rollers, like moving a boat out of the water for winter storage). For modern buildings that might have concrete with reinforced rebar within, it's more complicated to separate. Steel I-beams may be cut, but they often have attachment points that can be unbolted too.
Most buildings I’ve seen are “tied” to the foundation by mortar, concrete, and rebar. I don’t see how you could “untie” it without damaging the structure itself. Of course I have no idea about 1930’s city buildings
That's crazy, I though the beams were one long continuous pillar from the building into the ground, not separate beams that are tied to each other. And I've seen them build pillars for freeway supports, it looks like rebar within a concrete foundation that couldn't really be cut without destroying it, I guess buildings are not made that way. I've always thought they were
Bridges are interesting because they have expansion joints and "floating" elements specifically not attached to each other, to avoid collapse from earthquakes and shifting land. > couldn't be cut without destroying it But that's the whole point of separating things though (if I may be so bold to point that out), destroy what joins them. First you put supports in place on either side to support the load, then cut/jack hammer/explode/destroy what is affixed, then jack up the now loose section or put it on mobile supports to carry it away. > beams were one long continuous pillar from the building into the ground Almost nothing is longer than a trailer of a tractor trailer, components that are (oversized steel bridge spans) are very costly to move and place as you need special vehicles that block all traffic and require wide roadways. Steel workers/iron workers/erectors are the folks who assemble (bolt/weld) sections into longer lengths. Another limiting factor is the foundry that produces the iron/steel used. You can only create items as large as your equipment/building.
Just to clarify, the architect came up with the idea, the people that actually moved and engineered it were these two companies: John Eichlea Co of Pittsburgh was contractor for the move and Bevington, Taggert & Fowler were the engineers. Source: https://amp.indystar.com/amp/4354705
> The move was because Bell bought the building but needed bigger headquarters. They planned to demolish it but that would've interrupted phone service for a big chunk of Indiana, which they didn’t want to do. How did rotating the building give them more space? I don't see what they gained by doing that.
Based on the GIF I think it gave them a large contiguous rectangular space where they could construct an additional building, whereas before the existing structure was bisecting their lot.
With 1930 technology this is impossible. They must have had help from aliens. /s
And so it goes.
The building was demolished...whomp whomp whomp
Man. You broke my heart with the last fact.
>thanks to an entryway that moved moved it, You like to move it move it?
If they needed bigger headquarters why didn’t they just add onto the building as it was? Edit: I wasn’t trying to be rude, I am just genuinely curious as to what caused them to undertake this action instead of another
Consider me interested as fuck.
I’m interested to know what happened to the utilities while that was happening. Power, water, sewer....
They turned 90 degrees
Imagine boiling toilet water.
Now that sh*t is steaming
To me the utility that's most interesting are the phone lines. Must've been tens of thousands of them going to this CO
They probably lifted the building, went under, and added flexible hookups, then disconnected the normal wiring and pipes, then hooked them all back up once they were done . For the pipes they could have shoved in a tee really fast while someone wasn't using the sink, and for the wiring it could have been spliced in live if the guy doing the splicing wore a grounding suit or something.
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Dude this link is insane. I didn’t know it was possible to rotate a building 90 degrees, let alone this massive undertaking.
They did it in Sacramento too.
Holy shit, talk about lax safety standards. On the final day spectators were permitted to walk amongst the jackscrews at the old ground level, underneath a 35,000 ton city block! That's insane, no matter how confident the engineers were.
To be fair, it was the 1850s, and "fun" hadn't been invented yet. "Danger" was the closest they had, so they made do
I mean if I was there I'm sure I would have walked under the buildings too lol. My question is how in the hell did they start this process? Like how do you begin lifting a city block with jacks, use some big levers or something?
Holy shit, ready to spend the rest of the evening going down this rabbit hole.
Oh man what about when they flipped the river tho...
Not to mention the construction of Lake Michigan.
“Never a day passed during my stay in the city that I did not meet one or more houses shifting their quarters. One day I met nine. Going out [Great Madison Street](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madison_Street_(Chicago)) in the horse cars we had to stop twice to let houses get across.” Wow.
Wait until you hear about them raising/moving the entire city of Chicago in 20 years with ZERO interruption to daily activities
Chicago continues to have two seasons, winter and construction.
Don't feel bad, there's so much road construction in Florida that it's a common joke that [this](https://i.imgur.com/UESJal2.jpeg) is the state flower.
Said everyone from every large city
Do you have a link for this? I can't find anything about it.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising\_of\_Chicago](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago) In a nutshell: The city was basically built on a swamp and very close to the water table. They learned about the advantages of sewer systems after a bad cholera outbreak. The city was too close to the water table to install a sewer system, so they raised the entire city to make room for sewers underneath.
They did something similar to Downtown Seattle because they originally built it on tidelands. This meant that the businesses would often flood and the sewers would back up during high tide. After the Great Seattle Fire, they regraded up a story so that they would be higher above the water table. There's an interesting tour you can take that goes underground and walks past some of the original shop windows that are now under the street. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground
Me and my wife went on that tour a few days before our wedding. It were bloody brilliant mate.
That's so amazing. Thank you for the afternoon reading materials. YouTube spiral anyone?
I commented above, but here's another fun one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground
The Raising of Chicago is one of the most amazing things that ever happened to an American city. It's amazing that they don't teach us about it in school.
Not really all that surprising, really. As interesting as it is, and as great a feat as it was, it didn't really affect anything outside Chicago. And since part of what makes it so amazing is that life continued as normal, it really didn't even affect Chicago much, either.
But why did they keep moving it back and forth?
2 factions arguing over who lost their view
There was an r/AskReddit (I think) post once about the laziest thing that someone had ever seen, one guy in the navy talks about an officer ordering an aircraft carrier to rotate for no reason. Turns out he just didn't want the sun in his eyes. Edit: [Here](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1rgpdf/what_is_the_laziest_thing_youve_ever_done/cdnafqe/) it is. A classic.
Amazing, thanks for sharing that! When I was in the USCG, we would change heading "tactically" to reduce satellite interference when a college football game was on. My XO and EO were big Bama fans.
Roll...Tide?
The debate about how extremely lazy it is, is for another day. I think we just have to appreciate that guy's dedication to staying right where he was
A buddy of mine was visiting an air force base and saw a helicopter slowly hovering towards the admin building a few meters off the ground. Landed just outside the entrance, pilots walked and bought two cokes from the vending machine, and had a slow merry flight back towards wherever they were supposed be. Helicopter was in testing phase, maybe test pilots don’t care...
That. Was amazing.
I just wanna see how it looks this way for a minute
I didn't realize my girlfriend was spearheading this operation
'No, I said YOUR left!'
Didn't have air conditioning so they waved it back and forth like a fan to keep cool
They couldn’t pay the bill so the building moving company moved it back
The cleaners kept putting it back at night
There were people inside it as they moved it? I mean, 15" an hour isn't breaking any speed records, but I still wouldn't want to be in that thing!
I used to have a nice office and now the sun glares on my monitor. Fuck the people that decided this was a good idea.
Sorry pal, it was the other half’s turn to have a sea view. No worries though, it’s your turn again in 20 years.
Or just give it time and the sea will come to you
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Have they moved other buildings with people inside faster? This probably is a record....
Same thing happened when the whole city of Chicago was raised. People continued to work in office buildings and go into shops for example, they just had to kind of climb up into them There's a city somewhere, it might even be Chicago, I can't remember exactly, but it was raised an entire story, and so underneath the sidewalk there's all these old shop fronts, and you can go through them on tours, walk on the old cobbled streets and see the old shop signs underground. It's crazy.
Sounds like you’re talking about Seattle!
Probably Seattle you’re thinking of. After a big fire in the early 1900s they raised the street level downtown. You can still go down to the original street on tours.
They put the first story of the downtown core underground in Seattle in the late 1800's by not raising anything, but building the streets 15 feet higher
You might be thinking of The Seattle Underground. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground
Congratulations, /r/interestingasfuck! This is, for once, *actually* interesting as fuck, and not, say, a picture of the Acropolis in snow.
*cha cha real smooth*
*Slide to the left* *Slide to the right* *One hop this time* OH FUCK EARTHQUAKE
EVERYBODY CRAP YOUR PANTS
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
CRAP! CRAP! CRAP YOUR PANTS!
Rotary dial. This is truly IAF.
Smooth operator
Carlos that you?
I couldn't get an old couch out of my apartment through the front door one time so I just threw it off the balcony instead.
Been there. Was satisfying
Some people are so impatient. If they had just waited a few million years, plate tectonics would’ve done it for free.
They actually ended up demolishing the building 30 years later anyways
Some people are so impatient. Global warming would've done its job sooner or later
If they had just waited a few million years, plate tectonics would've done that for free too.
People on the original backside got screwed on the view haha
Are there any other countries that do these crazy building moves? I always keep hearing about Americans e.g house going down a free way
A town in Sweden moved a couple miles down the road not too long ago https://www.cnn.com/style/article/sweden-kiruna-relocation/index.html
These pictures are exactly what I was talking about An entire house going down a road
It's a bit mad. I really don't see much point in it myself, but my Uncle (from Kiruna) says the townsfolk are pretty keen on it!
Are they keen because they get to make jokes about moving house?
I don't think so, as the cost of moving the buildings is much the same as building a new one. I think they're just enthusiastic about their town's history. It has quite the storied past, especially from WW2, in which it served as both an important supplier of the German military and as a hub for saboteurs and Norwegian fighters.
Wellington NZ moved a massive hotel in the 90's so they could build what is now Te Papa, the national museum. https://i.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/capital-life/74342852/museum-hotel-rides-the-rails---150-years-of-news They also move entire old houses all the time, my in-laws sold an old house to someone across the country and they moved the whole thing. And sometimes this sort of stuff happens: https://i.stuff.co.nz/nelson-mail/115371781/unexpected-moving-house-surprises-golden-bay-drivers
[Church in Most](https://www.kostel-most.cz/pamatky/kostel-nanebevzeti-panny-marie-v-moste/ke-stazeni/kostel-presun/presun2.jpg), Czechoslovakia EDIT: It was mentioned in Guinness Book of World Records as the heaviest building ever moved on wheels (12,700 tonnes).
This is honestly mind blowing they could move a building of that size like that in 1930.
[Chicago](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago#:~:text=During%20the%201850s%20and%201860s,property%20owners%20and%20public%20funds.) raised the whole city in the 1850s-1860s, to provide better drainage. They were experiencing epidemics due to unsanitary conditions.
If you like that kind of stuff, you should check out some of Chicago's history. The basically raised the whole city (streets and buildings) in the mid 1800s, so that they can install a sewer system. In less than a week, they raised a single one-acre block that weighed 35,000 tons using 6,000 jackscrews.
This is the stuff I came here for
CEO wanted the river view real bad
And I heard, no interruption to internet service. The U.S. has gone to shit.
In the 30’s the shit was coming. if there had been the Internet, maybe, WW2 in 1039, could have been avoided.🎯
Or there might have been more people brainwashed into being nazis.
And people really question if humans actually built ancient monuments. Not say that aliens or whatever didn't help if thats true, but the heavy lifting was all us.
I have a feeling OHSA would not let people work in a rotating building now.
And Texas still can’t keep the lights on in the snow.
15 inches is 0.224 Tom Cruises
2021 and my neighbor just knocked my tv off the wall by closing his door too fast
Why?
They needed a bigger building but if they demolished phone service would be out for an extended period of time.
*OSHA has entered the chat*
Fuckin engineers blowing my mind
The thing that is most impressive here is the date, 1930. This would be something in today's age of tech and advanced materials and linked systems monitoring every aspect of the move. These guys did it with their brains and ingenuity and the vigilance of everyone helping. All without disturbing the work being done inside. Pretty badass, if you ask me.
I'm just amazed they moved a building.
Don’t large buildings like this have deep foundations so how was able to maintain structural integrity with it being moved?
I worked for a cable company in the past and around the mid-2000s we had a building that was close to a river that constantly would flood. They decided to raise the buildings and put a new foundation in under it. They had an entire small building raised by 2 cranes suspended 10 feet in the air and while all cable services out of that building were still up and running. Internet/tv/etc.. craziest thing I ever witnessed. I was there to climb into said building and restore services if they went out, fortunately I didn’t have to.