 | Before the historic house at 285 Prospect St. could be moved to its new location, all 720 tons of the structure had to be jacked up and placed on dollies made from the wheels of a Boeing 727 airplane. |
What do 285 Prospect St. and 380 Edwards St. have in common? They are the "before" and "after" addresses of a brick three-story house built in 1910 that made a 300-foot trip in about a week as part of project by Yale to preserve the historic structure.
The house was moved to make way for the construction of a new Yale science building, part of a $500 million effort underway to revitalize and expand facilities on Science Hill.
The Colonial Revival-style building, which will continue to be used by the School of Forestry & Environmental Studies at its new address, sat on a lot at 285 Prospect St. for nearly 100 years until the move began on May 14.
Weighing in at 720 tons, the 10,000-square-foot house was first jacked up about eight feet and placed on a stacked support while the old foundation was stripped away. Giant steel I-beams designed to serve as supports in transit -- each two feet high by one foot wide, 65 feet long and weighing seven tons -- were inserted through openings cut into the walls. Under the jacked-up house, contractors placed six 8-wheel dollies, which were made from the four-foot-high tires of a Boeing 727 airplane and capable of supporting 500 tons each; the house rested on these dollies once it was lowered.
During the first leg of the trip, the structure was slowly (at about 10 feet per hour) wheeled rearward to the farthest point on the cleared lot.
Then, as workmen created a roadbed of thick wooden planks crisscrossed atop one another, the 50-foot-square house was slowly pivoted 90 degrees to the right to face Edwards Street and the skeleton of its new foundation, a wall of iron rebar jutting out from poured concrete footings.
"Someone asked why we couldn't just roll the dollies on the compacted dirt instead of the planks," says Chuck Ebern of Yale's Office of Facilities, the project's supervisor. "It compacts the dirt quite a bit more." The project's general contractor was the New Haven-based Paragon Construction and the move contractor was Nicholas Brothers of Tarrytown, New York.
Finally, the house inched forward and arrived over its future foundation, where it was once again jacked up and placed on stacked wooden supports. There, it was lowered onto a newly poured concrete and block foundation that was built and fitted exactly under the structure.
A new side entrance will be constructed to make passage to an adjacent building easier, and the entire foundation will be backfilled, covering up the dirt highway that made the move possible, and the area will be topped off with an asphalt parking lot.
As part of its continuing effort to rehabilitate and use existing historic structures on campus, last year Yale reopened and dedicated the former Davies Mansion on Prospect Street, which was renamed Betts House after donor Roland K. Betts. The mansion had endured years of neglect and a major fire, but Yale architects and designers managed to restore the house while maintaining many of its original details and updating its mechanical services. Today it serves as the headquarters for the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization and the Yale World Fellows Program.
-- By Thomas R. Violante
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