Comment by jihadjihad | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jihadjihad | Hacker News Reader

Fun fact: the building's architect was Kurt Vonnegut, Sr., the father of the famous author. Indiana Bell wanted the building demolished to make room for a larger HQ building, but Vonnegut's idea was to move the building out of the way instead [0].

"Between Oct. 12 and Nov. 14 1930 the eight-story 11,000-ton Indiana Bell building was shifted 52 feet south along Meridian St. and rotated 90 degrees to face New York St. Workmen used a concrete mat cushioned by Oregon fir timbers 75-ton, hydraulic jacks and rollers, as the mass moved off one roller workers placed another ahead of it. Every six strokes of the jacks would shift the building three-eights of an inch - moving it 15 inches per hour."

"Gas, electric heat, water and sewage were were maintained to the building all during the move. The 600 workers entered and left the traveling structure using a sheltered passageway that moved with the building. The employees never felt the building move and telephone service went on without interruption. And yes, the move took less than 30 days. It remains one of the largest buildings ever moved. The building was demolished in 1963."

0: https://www.indystar.com/story/news/history/retroindy/2014/0...

The original was the Central Union Telephone Company building and the one moved to make way for the new building which was built by Vonnegut. The original building was demolished in 1963. The Vonnegut building is still there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_Building_(Indianapolis)

> demolished in 63!

After all that? FFS

Put another way, by doing this, they managed to get another 33 years of useful life out of the building before its inevitable demolition.

Put anothernother way, the structural integrity was sus following such an enormous move and eventually leveler heads won out after Kurt Vonnegut Senior died in 1957 (in Indianapolis).

Is this conjecture or fact?

A bell building like that almost certainly housed a large telephone exchange. Demolishing the building and then building a new one would likely require a temporary exchange to be installed somewhere else. Moving the existing building, and keeping it operating during the move, then building the new building would make it possible to transition the circuits to new exchanges built inside the new building with a minimum of downtime over the next 33 years.

And probably an entire floor or more of the building was dedicated to flooded lead/acid batteries for uninterrupted power to the telephone network.

Indeed, sadly that is mostly gone and buried now. Before the phone company was basically completely responsible for keeping your phone working.

Now keeping your phone working requires both parties, the vendor and the customer to keep stuff happy to make the phone work.

Yes I've visited the battery banks in make exchanges in the Netherlands in the early 2000s. Phone exchange equipment runs on 48V DC for this reason. I've even been to relay-based phone exchanges that still existed in those days, though they were rare. Pulse only. It was weird being in a dark building sounding like it was infested by crickets. Really spooky.

Why make stuff up?

It was build in 1907. So instead of getting demolished ~23 years later it was done when it was ~56 years old. Quite a win.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com