First, a little background for those who may not follow Salt Lake architectural and development news: A short distance from my office, there’s a 100-year-old building called Odd Fellows Hall, which stands right in the path of a planned extension to the federal court building. Rather than demolish Odd Fellows, somebody made the decision to move it to an empty lot right across the street from its original location. (For the record, another building on the same block, the Shubrick, wasn’t so lucky; it’s coming down now, several months after its primary tenant, a well-established and very popular nightclub called Port o’ Call, was forced out of business. Personally, I’d rather that the Shubrick and the Port had survived, or even better, that the new court complex simply be constructed around both of the older structures… but nobody ever listens to me.)
The engineering necessary to move a three-story brick building has been nothing short of astounding. Basically, the building was cut away from its foundation and jacked up so rollers could be slipped underneath it. Then the building was pushed into a nearby clear space and rotated 180 degrees; its former basement was filled in, and Odd Fellows was brought back to stand temporarily in its original lot. And there it’s been sitting for months, waiting to be moved across the street onto a new foundation.
Today, a brief article in the Salt Lake Tribune notes that it may finally make that last journey as soon as tomorrow. Which is very interesting in and of itself, but what really caught my eye was the article’s description of what’s been holding Odd Fellows Hall up all this time:
The Odd Fellows Hall was to be moved across Market Street in downtown Salt Lake City earlier this summer to make way for a new federal courthouse but a financial dispute between a contractor and subcontractor has stalled the relocation. The building is perched on doilies while the two sides negotiate.
Yes, friends, that massive pile of centenarian brick and mortar is being supported by nothing more than doilies. Because a little bit of lace makes everything nicer, I suppose…
It makes perfect sense, when you think about it. My grandma would be about 100 years old now, and she put doilies under everything.
Ha, ha, ha. Jason maybe you could try to get a picture of these doilies, just don’t knock the building over!
Ha! My office is right next door so yesterday morning we were all on alert to see if the “doilies” would keep it upright or if the whole building would come crashing down on our programmers. Fortunately, the doilies held. Let’s hear it for doilies!