Rotating a Building

This just does not seem possible. 

In 1930 the Indiana Bell building in Indianapolis was rotated 90 degrees. It took a month to move the 22-million-pound structure. It was rotated 15 inches per hour. 

But here is the most unbelievable part. All 600 employees kept working while it was being done.

There was no interruption to gas, heat, electricity, water, sewage, or the telephone service they provided. No one inside felt it move. People could still enter and exit the building via an entryway that also moved.

Bell bought the building but needed bigger headquarters. They planned to demolish it but that would've interrupted phone service for a big chunk of Indiana, which they didn’t want to do. So, they lifted the whole building with steam-powered hydraulic lifts, then set it on enormous pine logs. It was moved via hand-operated jacks, which pushed it over the logs 3/8" at a time. Once the building rolled far enough forward, the last log would be moved to the front.

It seems like something done in building the Great Pyramids.

Indiana Bell Telephone Company added a second building alongside its headquarters after they pivoted it 90 degrees on its side.

An interesting sidebar to the story is that the project’s lead architect was Kurt Vonnegut, Sr, father to the novelist Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Kurt senior was following in the footsteps of his own father, architect Bernard Vonnegut.

The building was demolished in 1963.

Unbelievable.

See https://twistedsifter.com/2021/03/1930-indiana-bell-building-move/