Over two days, in rain and flurries, crews moved the three-story, 762-ton historic Harriet Rees House about 600 feet to its new Chicago location.
It was literally history on the move, albeit very slowly. And one person caught it all on camera.
Ryan Jacobs posted to YouTube a 2-minute time-lapse of the process, showing the painstaking twists down narrow streets and around tight corners to the mansion's new home.
Workers arranged half-inch steel plates to distribute the weight of the home built in 1888, but the real trick came when contractors backed the building into place, taking it down an alley and putting it on a new foundation.
"We excavated around the house. We put in three main beams which run the length of the house. Then we put a series of crossbeams on top of those that run the width of the house," Peter Kuhn, senior project manager at Bulley & Andrews construction firm, told NBC 5. "After that we jacked it up approximately 8 feet."
The Rees house, the last structure standing on the 2100 block of South Prairie Avenue, was moved to make way for an expansion at McCormick Place that will see a new hotel and an arena for DePaul basketball.
The Rees House was granted landmark status in 2012 by the Chicago Commission on Landmarks.
