It is a truth universally acknowledged that moving is horrible. Even when the move is eagerly anticipated, the act of packing up and carting off one’s possessions is difficult work. It turns out, though, that it could be worse. In days past (and occasionally still), people moved not only their stuff but their actual homes as well.
That is the subject of the most recent book by Oak Parker Lee Brooke and River Forest resident Marcy Kubat. Houses to go!: Structural Moving From Houses to Train Depots to Bridges in Northern and Central Illinois, self-published by the pair in September, introduces readers to the practice of moving buildings from one location to another. And although their research took them to historical societies as far south as Quincy, Oak Park and River Forest are featured prominently.
Brooke, a retired medical librarian, has written, edited and/or published a number of books and videotapes about Oak Park and River Forest people, places and events. It was a family connection that inspired him to tackle the subject of structural moving.
“My great-grandfather, Edwin Durfee, was a house mover in Quincy,” explains Brooke. Although he never met his relative, Brooke hired a genealogist to trace his life. Little information about Durfee surfaced, but Brooke was struck by a circa-1886 ad the genealogist found, touting Durfee as a “practical house mover and raiser.”
Intrigued, Brooke discovered that moving a building from one place to another was not at all uncommon in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries. “It used to be much easier, when there weren’t overhead wires and trees were shorter. There are a lot more obstructions today,” he says. Not to mention a lot fewer vacant lots to accommodate an owner’s whim to take his house with him.
Not that it wasn’t always a complicated procedure, especially in the days when moves were made by teams of horses, Brooke cautions. An appendix to the book describes this process, which involved not only wrangling the horses but also building tracks and rigging pulleys and cables. Heavy trucks with steel wheels made the job easier, although moving a whole building without dropping or damaging it can never be considered simple.
This is the sixth book that Brooke and Kubat have collaborated on. They met at a meeting of a literary society, Phi Sigma, and found that their interests and talents matched up. “Mary is an editor and lover of words, along with being a very talented computer person,” says Brooke. “I tend to be the gatherer. I give her my work and she edits, forms paragraphs, and creates the book. I do the index.”
The two have also traveled extensively together; they’re been to Mexico, Latin America, Europe, Hong Kong and Thailand. Along with the books she’s done with Brooke, Kubat also has written about her travels and published a series of lectures she presented at Phi Sigma meetings. In addition, she is a serious oil painter, and recently had a one-woman show at Frame Warehouse in Oak Park.
For this book, the two contacted 350 historical societies around Illinois and got 60 replies. They also interviewed structural moving specialists and used local libraries for research. Brooke cites Frank Lipo, executive director of the Historical Society of Oak Park and River Forest and something of an expert on moving buildings (he wrote a master’s essay on the topic) as an invaluable resource.
The result, says Kubat, is by no means intended as an exhaustive history of the topic. It is aimed at peaking readers’ curiosity and introducing them to some of the most “interesting stories” surrounding the human and technical facets of moving buildings, she adds.
Raising the River Forest Public Library
Brooke first tackled the subject of structural moving when a local building, the River Forest Public Library, was “levitated,” as he describes it, in 1991. As he and Kubat explain in the book, the historic, William Drummond-designed library was raised 4 feet 2 inches so it could accommodate an addition and be made handicapped accessible. A new foundation was poured on top of the old one to hold the building in its new, higher place.
A longtime library user and friend of its then-director, Barbara Hall, Brooke documented the process for an article he submitted to a library journal that never published it. An updated version occupies a chapter of this book, complete with technical explanations and details Brooke gathered while he watched the proceedings firsthand.
One of Brooke’s favorite parts of the story, which he fortunately didn’t witness, is the fact that the library was struck by lightning one night while it was still up in the air. A terra cotta chimney pot was destroyed and part of the chimney toppled, but the rest of the building remained unscathed.
According to Brooke and Kubat, the cost of lifting the 700-ton library was about $2.25 to $2.5 million for the entire project, with the lifting alone coming in at around $100,000.
Hemingway slept here (barely)
Perhaps the most well-known modern structural move here is the 1999 journey of the old wood frame Victorian that once stood at 161 N. Grove Ave., next to the Oak Park Public Library’s immediate predecessor. Dubbed the Hemingway Interim House because Ernest Hemingway lived there with his family from 1905 to 1906, it was the subject of much debate when it stood in the way of the library’s expansion.
Brooke and Kubat document the story of the home’s rescue and purchase by Scot and Stacy Sterenberg, who bought it for $1 and spent $300,000 to move and prepare it for occupancy at its new home, 501 N. Elmwood Ave.
Brooke, along with the many Oak Parkers who turned out for the 13-hour, 10-block move, was a witness to the home’s journey. He even hired photographers at the time, and interviewed both participants and spectators.
“It was like a festival day here,” he recalls.
According to his account in the book, the complex process required raising electrical lines and removing cable wires. The house traveled by truck and trailer down Lake Street to Ridgeland Avenue, where it turned north and proceeded to the corner of Chicago and Elmwood avenues. Along the way, trees branches were hacked off and street lights flipped up to clear a path.
The Sterenbergs restored the home with the aid of Renovation Style magazine, which featured the results in a large spread. On June 2004, the Sterenbergs sold the house for $655,000 to new owners, according to Brooke.
Old and new moves
Although Brooke compiled a list of 50 reasons for moving a structure, he cites preservation as the most common. But in the early part of the 20th century, houses were also likely to be moved as business districts grew and land uses changed.
For example, the River Forest Tennis Club, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1905, was transported from its original location at Lake Street and Harlem Avenue (purchased by the Cook County Forest Preserve Commission in 1920) to its present home at Lathrop and Quick avenues in River Forest. The clubhouse was sawed into three sections to be moved; marks near the fireplaces show where the building was cut, notes Brooke.
Another Oak Park house mentioned by Brooke and Kubat once stood at 111 S. Oak Park Ave. When the once-residential street was zoned for business and plans were made to widen Oak Park Avenue, the house was moved, on stilts and rollers, to property at Wesley Avenue and South Boulevard.
In all, Brooke and Kubat touch on about 100 moves in over 30 communities, ranging from a Ninth century Viking ship sailed to Chicago from Norway for the Columbian Exposition of 1893 (and eventually hauled to Geneva in 1994 after a 74-year stop at the Lincoln Park Zoo) to a move just last April of a home from one lot to the next on the 800 block of Forest Avenue in River Forest.
Although Brooke emphasizes that “self-publishing is a hobby, not a business,” he and Kubat have been gratified to receive orders for their book from as far away as New Zealand and the Netherlands. And they are already at work on several other projects, including writing a history of the Kettlestrings family (early Oak Park settlers) and editing a diary recounting the experiences of River Forester Harry Peterson, who was in a World War II prison camp in Germany.
“Retirement means only working 14 hours a day,” comments Brooke.
To which Kubat adds, “We are doing all the things we couldn’t do when we were in the work force. I call this time ‘entirement.'”
Houses to Go! is available at most local bookstores or by phone at 383-5556.