7 ms·
In 1930, the 22M-pound Indiana Bell building was rotated 90 degrees
- zacharyvoase 4y agoThis may look cute, but you should know that buildings only do this when they are extremely distressed. If you see a building rotating, no matter how slowly, do not approach it!
- 1letterunixname 4y agoThis may happen https://youtu.be/yHp4Wi2d6BQ https://youtu.be/yHp4Wi2d6BQ
- fifilura 4y agoAnd here you are, a similar stunt performed in China. https://nitter.net/historyinmemes/status/1648843533116137472#m https://nitter.net/historyinmemes/status/1648843533116137472...
- dsfyu404ed 4y agoDistance per time seems like a very poor choice of unit for something that's roughly rotating about one corner of itself.
- MrDunham 4y agoTrue, but radians or degrees are general more abstract. "0.24 degrees per hour" (assuming 12 work hours per day) just doesn't really ring to me... and I have a mechanical engineering degree.
- Someone 4y agoIt gets worse when you call it 14.4 (arc) minutes per hour. Ignoring the ‘arc’, that’s dimensionless. You could just call it “0.24” ;-)
- Dylan16807 4y agoI guess it depends on how you do the ignoring. "minutes" by itself usually means "minutes of hour", but I would argue that if you take "minutes of arc" and ignore the "arc" the better answer is "minutes of ____"
- jmkb 4y agoPicture an analog clock and it can be 0.008 hours/hour... about one percent of an hourhand's movement.
- em-bee 4y agomeasuring degrees doesn't seem useful anyways, because it is not the rotating speed that is impressive but the speed against the ground at the outer edge.
- OJFord 4y agoI would guess it's the length of the outermost arc, sort of makes sense with the relation to employees inside not noticing it.
- f1shy 4y agoIt was not only rotated, but also shifted: „was shifted 52 feet south“
- 1letterunixname 4y agoLet's find the 2D (3x3) translation matrix for this. For angle representation, better use gradians because radians and degrees are too easy.
- jihadjihad 4y agoFun fact: the building's architect was Kurt Vonnegut, Sr., the father of the famous author. Indiana Bell wanted the building demolished to make room for a larger HQ building, but Vonnegut's idea was to move the building out of the way instead [0]. "Between Oct. 12 and Nov. 14 1930 the eight-story 11,000-ton Indiana Bell building was shifted 52 feet south along Meridian St. and rotated 90 degrees to face New York St. Workmen used a concrete mat cushioned by Oregon fir timbers 75-ton, hydraulic jacks and rollers, as the mass moved off one roller workers placed another ahead of it. Every six strokes of the jacks would shift the building three-eights of an inch - moving it 15 inches per hour." "Gas, electric heat, water and sewage were were maintained to the building all during the move. The 600 workers entered and left the traveling structure using a sheltered passageway that moved with the building. The employees never felt the building move and telephone service went on without interruption. And yes, the move took less than 30 days. It remains one of the largest buildings ever moved. The building was demolished in 1963." 0: https://www.indystar.com/story/news/history/retroindy/2014/01/07/indiana-bell/4354705/ https://www.indystar.com/story/news/history/retroindy/2014/0...
- jonplackett 4y ago> demolished in 63! After all that? FFS
- aaronmdjones 4y agoPut another way, by doing this, they managed to get another 33 years of useful life out of the building before its inevitable demolition.
- killjoywashere 4y agoPut anothernother way, the structural integrity was sus following such an enormous move and eventually leveler heads won out after Kurt Vonnegut Senior died in 1957 (in Indianapolis).
- throwmeaway1212 4y ago
- Joker_vD 4y agoAn inspiring reminder that lots of crazily monumental (pun intended) things are technically possible if only you actually want them to happen and willing to spend money on it. P.S. "22 million pounds"? That's approximately 22 thousand half-tons or 11 thousand tons in sensible units. Then again, we're still measuring disk sizes in half-kibibytes by default even though the sector sizes have actually been 4/8 KiB for years...
- briffle 4y agoWhen you word it that way, it doesn't sound as impressive.. I've seen many 20k ton objects move large distances.. they are trains :)
- Ekaros 4y agoMany of them even float... Referring to ships that are next size up.
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoAnd 25 years earlier in 1905, 6000 ton Calvin Hall was moved on the Iowa campus in a similar way. It was a well-understood technique by 1930.
- mrguyorama 4y agoProbably had a bunch of domain knowledge left over from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago
- Joker_vD 4y agoAre they? I vaguely recollect freight trains' weight being in the vicinity of 6-8 thousand tons, not in the twenty thousands. How long would such a train be, 200 boxcars or something? Seems a bit unwieldy.
- toast0 4y ago
- equalsione 4y ago"During the 1850s and 1860s, engineers carried out a piecemeal raising of the level of central Chicago to lift it out of low-lying swampy ground. Streets, sidewalks, and buildings were physically raised on jackscrews." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago
- finnh 4y agoSame deal in Seattle. Small parts of "the underground" remained in use for decades, including as speakeasies during Prohibition, but nowadays it's only tourist thing (but pretty cool nonetheless) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground
- rootusrootus 4y agoA little different, though. No buildings were raised in Seattle, they just built the roads higher (12-30 feet) and bridged the old sidewalks. Second floor became first floor.
- 1letterunixname 4y agoThat's funny: I swear a Seattle architect designed the building I live in because the ground floor is floor 2. It also skips floor 13.
- paulette449 4y agoI went on the Seattle Underground tour, it was really interesting, strongly recommended. The website has more history [1]: "(Bill) Speidel ultimately did find the remains of the city consumed in the Great Seattle Fire of 1889, a town founded on mostly soggy tideflats whose streets would, whenever the rains came, bloat deep enough with mud to consume dogs and small children. After the fire, which destroyed some 25 square blocks of mostly wooden buildings in the heart of Seattle, it was unanimously decided that all new construction must be of stone or brick masonry. The city also decided to rise up from the muck in which its original streets lay. It was this decision that created the Underground: The city built retaining walls, eight feet or higher, on either side of the old streets, filled in the space between the walls, and paved over the fill to effectively raise the streets, making them one story higher than the old sidewalks that still ran alongside them." [1] http://www.undergroundtour.com/about/history.html http://www.undergroundtour.com/about/history.html
- n1b0m 4y agoHow did they get under the foundations of the building in order to move it?
- tantalor 4y agoYou don't move the foundation, you move the building.
- n1b0m 4y agoHow do you get in between the foundations and the building to lift it?
- kube-system 4y agoI'm not sure about the construction of this building in particular -- but generally speaking you support the building from an alternative location under it, then you can lift it off the foundation. https://i.pinimg.com/736x/93/cd/bb/93cdbbe7117f16e89c74e4909e448af1.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/736x/93/cd/bb/93cdbbe7117f16e89c74e4909...
- cuttysnark 4y agobreak through at several strategic points where the building meets the foundation and place hydraulic jacks in the voids. Once enough jacks are in place and lifted, _they_ now serve as the support; the remaining parts of the building can be removed/disconnected from the original foundation.
- n1b0m 4y agoThanks for the explanation. This is on a much smaller scale but shows what you’ve described: https://youtu.be/Qnr5v0farM0 https://youtu.be/Qnr5v0farM0
- xenadu02 4y agoTo give a more concrete answer: you dig under a small section of footing. Small enough that the footing itself bridges the load across the gap. Then you install your first support element between the remaining undisturbed soil and the footing. Now that section is supported just as it was before, but by a jack, strut, wheel truck, or whatever instead of soil. Rinse and repeat until all the soil is gone. For larger internal spans you usually install bracing elements like trusses or I-beams. This is done in a similar way: you hollow out a narrow strip, install the truss/beam, then that gives you enough leeway to continue digging on either side of it until you reach the location for the next truss/beam. Shims are used to ensure solid contact all along the length. The trusses/beams are anchored to the support elements. At any one time only a very small part of the building's foundation is "floating" and unsupported. Actually moving the building varies based on its size, weight, and other factors. You'd usually jack up the whole building to make room for the trucking elements which might be independently steerable wheels, one or more semi-trailers, or whatever. Then you lower the building onto the trucking element and it becomes a really big vehicle or trailer that you slowly and carefully move. At the destination you usually pour new footings and/or piers in the same pattern as the original support elements so your truck bits can just drive right into place. Then you again just jacks to lift the building off the truck elements, move them out, then lower the building onto the new footings. This is very simplified. A lot of engineering goes into making sure the building moves as a single piece without too much flexing (vertically or horizontally) and that the "road" it moves on can support the weight.
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoYears earlier in 1905, the University of Iowa moved it's Science Building to a new location, off the famous Pentacrest park to its current location across the street. It had to be turned to pass through the neighboring buildings, then turned back to its final location on a foundation prepared. Here's an article (a pdf, not a web page) https://pubs.lib.uiowa.edu/ihi/article/id/1547/download/pdf/ https://pubs.lib.uiowa.edu/ihi/article/id/1547/download/pdf/
- returningfory2 4y agoReminds me of a recent story in New York in which a Broadway theater was raised 30 feet. The owner of the building wanted to put commercial space on the ground floor, but the theater itself was on the ground floor and protected. So the solution was to raise the theater above the ground floor. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/28/business/palace-theater-times-square-lift.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/28/business/palace-theater-t...
- oriettaxx 4y agohttps://www.openculture.com/2021/04/when-the-indiana-bell-building-was-rotated-90-while-everyone-worked-inside-in-1930.html https://www.openculture.com/2021/04/when-the-indiana-bell-bu...
- jtaillon 4y agoThis article (and the included video) has a bit more detail for those interested in the mechanics of how they accomplished the move (like me!): https://www.archdaily.com/973183/the-building-that-moved-how-did-they-move-an-11000-ton-telephone-exchange-without-suspending-its-operations https://www.archdaily.com/973183/the-building-that-moved-how...
- dingosity 4y agoAnd yet today we can't update a tag on a Lambda without something going wrong.
- mtoner23 4y agoChicago just did one of these moves last year. To move an old building out of the way for new red line track. https://news.wttw.com/2021/08/04/time-lapse-video-cta-moves-1000-ton-historic-building-30-feet https://news.wttw.com/2021/08/04/time-lapse-video-cta-moves-...
- 0cf8612b2e1e 4y agoThey did that one in only two days!
- Kon-Peki 4y agoHere's another from about 10 years ago; they moved a mansion and its coach house to another block on the street to make room for a basketball arena. Impressive that they squeezed it into a tiny city lot, and saved the tree in the (new) backyard! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVEgXkbiTaE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVEgXkbiTaE
- hindsightbias 4y agoThat 8000 ton building at Fell & Franklin? It wasn't built there. https://hoodline.com/2015/06/newton-j-tharp-school/ https://hoodline.com/2015/06/newton-j-tharp-school/ https://www.opensfhistory.org/osfhcrucible/2021/02/28/the-journey-of-commerce-high-a-closer-look/ https://www.opensfhistory.org/osfhcrucible/2021/02/28/the-jo...
- robotnikman 4y agoReminds me of the raising of Chicago, which happened in the 1850's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago
- dang 4y agoRelated: Indiana Bell Building was rotated 90° while everyone inside still worked in1930 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30544635 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30544635 - March 2022 (2 comments) In 1930 the Indiana Bell building was rotated 90° - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29441670 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29441670 - Dec 2021 (122 comments) In 1930 the Indiana Bell Telephone Building was rotated 90 degrees - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26534718 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26534718 - March 2021 (2 comments) Indiana Bell Building Move (Of 1930) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26530546 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26530546 - March 2021 (9 comments) Indiana Bell moved a functioning building in 1930 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21468788 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21468788 - Nov 2019 (24 comments) Rotating the Indiana Bell Building (2014) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20901264 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20901264 - Sept 2019 (5 comments)
- openforce 4y agoThings people do for Vaastu Compliance! /jk
- lo_zamoyski 4y agoThis is more common than it might seem.[0][1][2][3] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_relocation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_relocation [1] https://tvpworld.com/41981555/lubomirski-palace-moved-to-new-location-49-years-ago https://tvpworld.com/41981555/lubomirski-palace-moved-to-new... [2] https://science.howstuffworks.com/engineering/structural/heaviest-building-moved.htm https://science.howstuffworks.com/engineering/structural/hea... [3] https://untappedcities.com/2014/08/22/8-historic-buildings-that-have-been-moved-in-nyc/2/?displayall=true https://untappedcities.com/2014/08/22/8-historic-buildings-t...
- DANmode 4y agoMost of these aren't housing telecom infrastructure, or performing downtime-less patchovers! This feat is far more impressive than you're giving credit.
- Doxin 4y agoThis[1] is a great video on the topic of cutovers. Not quite downtime-less, but seriously impressive little amount of downtime in any case. [1] https://youtu.be/saRir95iIWk https://youtu.be/saRir95iIWk
- hi41 4y agoWhat a marvel of engineering! I find it amazing that it could be done almost 100 years back. I didn’t think technology was so advanced back then. Don’t the pillars of the building go deep into the land? How were able to lift the whole building with the pillars that buried so deep?
- vba616 4y agoMoving buildings, not just rotating them, is not that unusual. In fact, there's a building I know of that was moved, people changed their mind soon after, and then they moved it again. Once it was a mansion that reportedly belonged to Leland Stanford (you west coasters might have heard of him), later a nursing home, and finally a bank. It was in the way of a Wal-Mart and other development. This page says that one of the moves was 350 feet: https://www.wolfehousebuildingmovers.com/news/moving-ingersoll/ https://www.wolfehousebuildingmovers.com/news/moving-ingerso... A rail depot in Ohio was moved 1000 feet: https://www.wolfehousebuildingmovers.com/news/wolfe-moves-csx-depot/ https://www.wolfehousebuildingmovers.com/news/wolfe-moves-cs... A gas station is claimed to have been relocated 1.5 miles in three hours: https://www.wolfehousebuildingmovers.com/news/historic-philadelphia-gas-station-relocation/ https://www.wolfehousebuildingmovers.com/news/historic-phila... (This is not an endorsement of the company and I'm not affiliated with them; I just found their page by looking for the mansion)