Man pays $400K to move his 139-year-old Victorian home a few blocks down the street
When someone says “moving day”, do you think it looks something like this?
Were you imagining someone driving a Canter-type truck? A bunch of large cardboard boxes? A two-wheeled hand trolley moving back and forth to move said boxes?
We bet you weren’t expecting a trailer truck with a team holding a banner saying “Oversize Load”. More spectacularly, it’s also accompanied by escorts from local authorities saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, please stand on the sidewalk. There’s a house coming down the street.”
The house being moved is called “The Englander House”.
The 139-year-old two-story Victorian house has been a historical fixture in the heart of San Francisco. But with the city suffering from a housing shortage and the Englander House sitting on a prime location, developers were poised to build a 48-unit building on the site.
Instead of demolishing the house, however, the owners opted for a more fitting end for the historic landmark. The process of saving the house included thousands of dollars, 15 different city agencies, and prayers hoping that everything goes according to plan.
Tim Brown, the owner of the six-bedroom house, paid $400,000 for the move.
To move the piece of history from 807 Franklin St. to 635 Fulton St., he and his team had to spend years in planning alone.
As the house slowly lurched down the street, hundreds of onlookers watched with their phones raised at the ready. Men in hardhats and reflector jackets dotted the street as they made sure that the procession goes without a hitch.
The route was also “terraformed” to accommodate the convoy. Parking meters were removed. Tree branches were cut. They even relocated traffic signs just to make sure it won’t get snagged.
The move is not the first of its kind in the city.
A certain Samuel Clemens, or as most of us knew as Mark Twain even wrote about a house move like this in the local newspaper. But the city’s most famous, or infamous, move involved 12 Victorian houses.
The city’s Western Addition redevelopment plan required clearing out an entire community just to build housing for wealthier residents. 2,500 Victorian houses were demolished with only 12 being saved.
The local community lauded this logistical and engineering feat.
More than the effort and money involved just to transfer an old house, they praised the team for their intentions in preserving the city’s historical heritage.
“These houses are part of the fabric of San Francisco,” Fiona McDougall from the Victorian Alliance of San Francisco told a news outlet. “It’s important to preserve them rather than replacing them with a bunch of cold boxes.”
For others, it also was a source of hope.
Dave Glass, a photographer who lived in the Western Addition, was there to witness the Englander House’s journey. He shared that while the process didn’t change much, the attitude towards these houses did.
“People didn’t give a damn about the Victorian houses,” he told The Guardian, “Now they are prized.”
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With thousands of these houses demolished and only a handful being saved, he, along with others, wish that the citizens of San Francisco can continue to preserve and protect the city’s history.
Watch how San Franciscans show their version of “moving day”.
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Source: YouTube – The Sun, The Guardian, The Sun, NBC, Instagram – sfheritage