Hopkinsville Kentuckian., 1900-11-13
BIG BUILDINGS THAT TRAVEL.
Remarkable Ingenuity 'of lhe Americas
Engineer Demonstrated.

The ingenuity of American en-
gineers has made a reputation for
the country in no more spectacular
matter than in the moving Of great
buildings from place to place and for
eigners seem never weary of express
ing their wonderment at and often
their entire disbelief in the accounts
that are published in the daily papers
and technical journals, says the
American Architect At home here
we see nothing remarkable in moving
a building onto scows and towing
them across, say, bay of San Francisco,
or placing one on runners and draw
ing it across a New York lake, or
building special railroad tracks and
moving a great hotel several hundred
feet back from the encroaching sea by
the agency Of forty locomotives, as
was done in the case Of the Hotel Man
haitian.
Even the migration Of the build
ings of an entire town on wheels, such
as was chronicled a few weeks ago,
seems to us merely an amusing, but
not a particularly unusual, event.
Perhaps the longest journey build
ing ever took was when the old stone
jail was moved from New York city
to San Francisco, but in this case the
building was taking down stone by
stone and freighted to the Pacific
coast round the Horn. This evenN
was interesting, too, because it was
found, we believe, that the stones.
were joggled together with cannon
balls. The name Of the Hotel Pei
ham, Boston, will always be familiar
in the annals Of building, as that was
the first large masonry building that
was moved horizontally from its old
to its new foundations, although the
vertical jacking up of masonry build
ings was not a novelty.
So, too, the fame Of the Carnegie
library building at Pittsburgh is
likely to be similarly remembered, if
its projected removal is acually car
ried out, for it seems hardly likely
that an attempt will ever be made to
move so large and complicated build
ing so great a distance under circum-
stances so little advantageous. In
speaking Of these audacious under
takings, we must not forget that
among the most dangerous and deli
cate Of them all are the movings Of
several great mill chimney-stalks,
and, perhaps, there should be includ-
ed in the same category the moving,
floating to position, and sinking Of
the caissons for lighthouses, as at
Diamond Shoals, Cape Hatteras and
elsewhere, 1t is in the performance
Of such feats as these that the archi-
tect is the first to appreciate and ap-
plaud the skill Of the engineer. 5
The latest to Join the ranks Of peri
patetic buildings is the Hotel VOLTA
ton, Brookline, Mass, a structure
that has had most disastrous career,
although a short one-it was begun
only in the year 1S9r-it having al
ready once been removed back on its
lot for a distance of 20 feet, owing to
relocation of the street building line.
The unusual character of the opera
ton attracted the attention Of the
public as well as the local building de-.
partment, and criticism soon became
frequent, as structural defects due to
uneven settlement began to declare
themselves. Finally, the matter
caught the attention of the state in
spector Of buildings, with the conse-
quence that the tenants of the build
ing, an apartment house, were re-
quired to yacatc it while further at
tempts were made to restore it to use
fulness These proved fruitless, and
after the unfortunate building had
consumed over hundred thousand
dollars of the owners money, it was,
after standing deserted for months,
abandoned to the mortgage, who has
just sold the property to new owners
for about a third of its cost.
An attempt is now to be made to
move the building, which weighs
some 10000 tons, through distance
Of one hundred and thirty-odd feet, to
a new foundation prepared for it on
a somewhat better site. So far as
the moving is concerned, there are