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Geetright t1_ixvtj3d wrote

That's pretty amazing if it were to happen today, but 1930?? Excellent engineering!

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TheCloudFestival t1_ixvv8xh wrote

The photographs of the works are crazy. Because they had to rotate the building they had to dig out a circular trench around the whole ground floor so none of the corners caught as it turned. As a consequence, the building's workers had to enter through a covered bridge that spanned between the pavement and whatever direction the building was facing at the time. For a while those workers had their own moat and drawbridge 😮

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Gillilnomics t1_ixvwun7 wrote

IIRC the Dunaway’s building (brick building at the corner of Virginia and east) was moved from the Lilly campus

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DirtyDanTheManlyMan t1_ixvy498 wrote

They raised an entire city block in my hometown like 100 feet because it used to flood all the time.

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IronicBread t1_ixvyexf wrote

I was wondering why they would go through all that effort, but seeing as it was a telephone exchange building it makes sense that it was vital that it need to be up and running full time. Impressive feat

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innergamedude t1_ixw0j5e wrote

There's a linked youtube video that shows the process. Also, that one of the architects of the move was Kurt Vonngut, Sr, the father of author Kurt Vonnegut.

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dravik t1_ixw2xbt wrote

How did they do it without any interruptions to plumbing, power, or gas?

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Killaship t1_ixw2zxk wrote

This is amazing, especially for what they had in 1930!

Also, it sort of reminds me of those Foucault pendulums, where the pendulum moves so slowly that you can't notice it, but after a few hours, it moves quite a bit. It's sort of like that, you don't even know the building's moving, but a month later, it's been fully turned!

edit: why was I downvoted? :(

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JimblesReborn t1_ixw3rgs wrote

Meanwhile I think we're going into year 12 of adding one lane to I-69 between Gas City and Bloomington Indiana

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Jproff448 t1_ixw3xwd wrote

This has already been reposted thousands of times

−13

IcravelaughterandTHC t1_ixw96fj wrote

I always read this when it comes around, and thank you for another page I need to bookmark for architecture knowledge.

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mashtato t1_ixwbzb5 wrote

>The new headquarters was completed in 1932, and was seven stories tall. It was later expanded in the 1940s and 1960s to bring it to its current size and height. The original building that had been moved was demolished in 1963.[3]

FFS

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JustAPerspective t1_ixwm0st wrote

Brilliant engineering & stable construction. Meanwhile, just building something that doesn't loom over its neighbors is beyond current standards in San Francisco.

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Ken-Popcorn t1_ixwv2xn wrote

This has been posted about 200 times… steal something original

−10

TamedTheSummit t1_ixx93hg wrote

That is some pretty incredible shit. And with the limited tools of the period. America definitely blew their load early and hasn’t really done shit since the moon.

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ricky302 t1_ixxbbi6 wrote

How shallow were the foundations?

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RastaImp0sta t1_ixxig6h wrote

Lol this has got to the be the most commonly reposted TIL. It’s almost as if the people reposting this found out about it from a repost itself and then think “I should definitely repost this in TIL”.

−9

cain071546 t1_ixxrt2u wrote

Replying to jeffderek (#700,427)

I have seen it before, but not for a few years now.

And I browse this sub every.single.day.

Reposting is fine IMO, only basement dwellers complain about reposting on reddit.

0

cain071546 t1_ixxs9es wrote

Replying to Salt_MasterX (#701,223)

Yep, I lived in a house that had a 1911 furnace that had been converted from coal to sawdust to gas, it was plumbed with steel pipes that were only for "structural tubing" use, they weren't even legal for plumbing/water much less gas!

The look on the face of the HVAC guy who installed the new gas/electric furnace in ~2009 was hilarious, he was like "I have never seen this kind of pipe, it's not legally rated for water or gas...."

I loved that old house, lathe and plaster walls with knob and tube wiring, no grounds, The oven was from the 1950's and if you touched certain parts it would shock you.

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OsmiumBalloon t1_ixxtwhz wrote

Replying to TheCloudFestival (#691,670)

The thing that really impresses me is that they kept the telephone service providied from the building up. Thousands upon thousands of pairs of tiny wires -- one per customer telephone line -- all run into a building like that.

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OsmiumBalloon t1_ixxu7z8 wrote

Replying to dravik (#692,631)

Photo in linked page shows what appear to be large hoses. I'm guessing that's the plumbing. I don't know how they could do a cut on that without an interruption. Perhaps a quick cut over, over night, was considered acceptable, but I don't know.

Power can be run in flexible cables fairly easily, and even bridged while live if you're careful.

Gas I dunno. Presumably flexible lines of some kind, but that's not something I'm familiar with.

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Ronfecero t1_ixy99w6 wrote

20 years later there was a similar case in my hometown Guadalajara, you can check the facts here

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pudding7100 t1_ixyhx2a wrote

why wouldn't they have the people inside get out of the building before doing this?

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TheCloudFestival t1_ixyiac7 wrote

Replying to FoodAccount420 (#704,465)

Well it's more impressive when you realise this building was a working telephone exchange, and this was before automatic relays, so every single telephone wire running in and out of the building had to be turned 90° and lengthened a few hundred feet without loss of service.

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EdenG2 t1_ixyt3tk wrote

And so it went

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Complete_Entry t1_ixytqzw wrote

Replying to cain071546 (#701,699)

Holy shit, my grandma's stove would always shock me and everyone called me a liar!

Thank you for vindicating me... 30 years after the house was demolished.

The replacement house was very nice, and the new stove never shocked me.

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[deleted] t1_ixz9dwj wrote

I was reading this and thought, “wow how cool!” Then I got to “no one inside felt it move” and now I have so many questions 🤣

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PoppinBubbles578 t1_ixzcg3a wrote

Whoa. And I thought it was cool when they moved the Hatteras lighthouse 2,900 feet in 1999. 😳

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mx_ich_ t1_ixzjwuf wrote

There are actually incidents where people moved entire houses across continents, for example from England to the USA or to Australia.

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LPercepts OP t1_ixzx332 wrote

Replying to pudding7100 (#704,663)

Because the building is a call exchange center. It provides an essential service to the public that those in charge did not want to be disrupted. That's why they were moving the building, rather than outright demolishing it.

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mx_ich_ t1_iy07obf wrote

Replying to Dereg5 (#713,817)

Yeah well I just responded to his question. Then obviously they would have to replumb everything and do all the electrician work etc. It makes you wonder why the rotated the building, and didn't just reinstall the door on the other side.

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squigs t1_iy2rfcy wrote

Replying to IronicBread (#692,043)

>but seeing as it was a telephone exchange building

That makes it even more incredible! Surely there are hundreds of connections into the building rather than just the usual gas, electricity, water.

I wonder if "no interruption" is completely literal, or whether they did need to switch some of these off for a few minutes to connect to a different pipe/cable.

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mashtato t1_iy55h51 wrote

Replying to strangehitman22 (#697,343)

Same. I kinda have soft plans on visiting Indianapolis for the 2024 eclipse, and when I saw how close this building is to Monument Circle in the pictures I thought "oh cool, I'll go take a look at this building too!," but when I looked up the address it looked like some ugly 60s office building.

Alas.

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