Indiana Bell Building Move (Of 1930) | Hacker News Reader

Indiana Bell Building Move (Of 1930)

paul-f.com

43 pointsjen209 comments

The straight line move used manually operated jack screws. Each was operated by a team of men that turned handles through an arc of 90 degrees six times in about 30 seconds, and then they rested 30 seconds (!). Each operation moved the load about 3/8 of an inch.

It wasn't fast, but moving a 11000 ton building by hand is pretty impressive.

Then you might also be interested in the history of chicagos sewer system. The tldr is they raised the city so they could build a drainage system that flowed in the right direction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago

Seattle went about this a different way, and essentially built on top of the old cruft ala New New York in Futurama.

If you’re ever in Seattle, I highly recommend doing the underground tour!

That just makes sense, but I like how Chicago undertook the monumental engineering task of raising the street level.

After reading about this on HN previously, I bought some used screw jacks [0] and lifted half of my house.

They're amazing and effectively last forever. You can generally free one up with rust blaster + lube + muscle. If you have a rod long and strong enough, you can lift anything.

The only caveats I'd make are: (0) understand structural load, and what and where you're lifting, (1) be very careful with the placement of jack and getting a good vertical plumb on the post (lots of checks with levels, continuously!), (2) think about where you want permanent supports, as there's no "swap it in" when the jack is now holding up your house... exactly where you want a post, (3) buy multiples, as you'll always want one more, (4) lift to max < fully unscrewed, as they're weaker and less stable-tolerant at full extension, (5) put something squishy (e.g. pressure treated 2x) between metal and crackable surfaces to widen contact patch, (6) make sure to get a solid, centered placement on your lifting post.

Other than that, go have fun lifting the world with simple machines. :-)

[0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/House_Ja...

Animated GIF of move: https://i.redd.it/r0yn6ugz80z31.gif

Saw this in tweet form: https://twitter.com/splattne/status/1373698826880614402?s=21

Apparently Kurt Vonnegut Sr. came up with the plan.

It's amazing that:

A) All utilities were functional during the move

B) The building was open to business during the move

C) It was initially moved by hand (before the rotation part)

D) It was completed in 1 month

Simply hurts my brain to think that it is possible to move buildings around, in 1930 no less.

I must admit Compared to my ex employer BT AT&T employed much better architects.

Compare Baynard House or MLB at Martelsham

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