WOW! FINALLY A NEW ONE . . .

I apologize for the long absence from the blog. As I mentioned in a prior entry, it has been a hectic year thus far, and my priorities have been required elsewhere. Today we all seem to be doing okay, so I thought I would share a move with you.

As most of you know, I work in downtown Salt Lake, next to the Federal Court on Main Street. They are expanding the court house and it will take the entire block. Since there is a building that is considered (apparently by our Federal Government) to be of historical value, it is being moved. The building is called Odd Fellows because that is the name of the secret society of men that meet there many, many, many years ago. I don't really know anything about the group, other than I have been told that it was a very strange and peculiar group. I'm not exactly sure why one would want to preserve a building that really isn't all that attractive, and has housed nothing but pigeons for a number of years, but apparently our Federal dollars do??

Prior to today, the building was braced, windows removed and filled brick, and raised about 15 feet off of it's foundation. A week or two ago it was moved several yards down the empty lot in preparation for today. This morning they began to rotate the building 360 degrees in order to eventually slide it back to it's original location, and then across the street for it's final resting place. My office is on the 10th floor of our building so I had a fairly good view and took a few pictures throughout the day with my cell phone. I also went down and took a few pictures at ground level, just to show the massive size of the building they are moving.

You can see the original location on the left side of the picture.

The building continues it's spin . . .

A ground level prospective . . .

This is not a big building by "big building" standards, but considering what they are doing to it . . . I think it qualifies as huge!

That's a pretty good size bulldozer to the right of the building, and it is dwarfed . . . I hope you can see it. To move the building they hooked bulldozers and large trucks to numerous cables and pulled. The building is sitting on steel and then wood platforms, followed by literally hundreds of large tires.

By about 4:00pm the building had made the complete 360 degree turn, and the front of the building was facing South, rather than North as it had when I arrived this morning.

This is a little bit of a different angle.

The next step is to move it back over its original hole, then across the street and slightly to the left. Hopefully, I am able to take a few pictures when that takes place and I will share them.