Feb. 27 (UPI) — The city of St. Louis, Mo., moved a 122-year-old house about seven-tenths of a mile to make room for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s new campus.
The home of Charlesetta Taylor, 81, was loaded onto a truck Sunday morning and slowly driven through the city’s streets to its new location.
Taylor had been a vocal opponent of the St. Louis Development Corp.’s plan to give the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency a 96-acre site for its new $1.75 billion campus, leading officials to promise Taylor they would move her home to a new location of her choosing outside the area of the eminent domain project.
“This is making good on a promise that we made,” Mayor Francis Slay said in a statement provided to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
The process of moving the home, which was built in 1895 and purchased by Taylor’s family in 1945, began at 7 a.m. Sunday and the house arrived at its destination about 1:30 p.m.
John Matyiko, owner of Expert House Movers, which was contracted for the move, said the house weighs nearly 370 tons.
“To put it in proportion, we moved the original airport terminal in Newark, New Jersey, and that was 7,000 tons,” he told St. Louis Public Radio. “And the tallest building we moved was 21 stories.”
