A century-old, two-story apartment building, weighing approximately 150 tons, caused a spectacle as it was moved on the streets of San Jose, Calif., early Sunday morning, to the delight of sidewalk gawkers along Reed Street.
Habitat for Humanity, the City of San Jose, the Preservation Action Council of San Jose, and developer KT Urban joined together to save the Pallesen apartment building on the first block of E. Reed Street to make room for the Garden Gate Tower, a 27-story residential project.
The move took more than three hours. But since you’re busy we condensed the journey into a timelapse video.
The Sunday drive was orchestrated by 85-year-old Howard Kelly of Kelly Brothers House Movers, whose grandfather started moving houses with mules when the regions was known as the Valley of Heart’s Delight not Silicon Valley.
Howard Kelly of Kelly Brothers House Movers claims to have a picture of himself that appeared in the newspaper when he was 12 years old at the wheel of a moving truck. Now he has one of himself at the young age of 85. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group) On another Sunday back in 1987, Kelly Brother’s House Movers rolled the historic DeLuz House down Santa Clara Street in an iconic photograph by Mercury News photographer Jim Gensheimer as it inched over the Highway 101 overpass toward the San Jose History Museum in San Jose, Calif. The brothers moved a total of three houses that day. The century-old Pallesen apartment building is the latest architectural treasure saved in San Jose as high-rise developments continue downtown, Sunday, March 28, 2021. The four unit building will be converted into affordable housing by Habit for Humanity. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group) Rendering view on South First Street of Garden Gate Tower, a residential and retail highrise that will built on the corner of Reed Street where the Pallesen apartment building stood for 111 years.
Last month, San Francisco had a house moving party, too, as 139-year-old, two-story Victorian house was moved from a steep location on Franklin Street to a quieter street where it, like the Pallesen, will become affordable housing.
