Moving entire buildings may sound like futuristic technology, but this type of operation has a surprisingly long history. Already in the first half of the 20th century, similar projects were successfully carried out, sometimes even without evicting the occupants. The forerunner was the United States, and Europe soon joined the race. Polish engineers also have much to boast about. Suffice it to mention the post-war relocation of the baroque Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (we wrote about it HERE) or the rotation of the Lubomirski Palace in Warsaw (we wrote about it HERE). The reason? It was usually for new urban developments that required the removal of existing obstacles from the planned route of a street or square. This was the case in 1987 in the Romanian city of Alba Iulia, where a four-storey apartment block from the communist era stood in the way of a future representative avenue.
Operation in Alba Iulia
The brains behind the whole project was engineer Eugen Iordăchescu, who has saved dozens of buildings from demolition, including churches and monasteries across the country. The block colliding with the new Transylvanian Boulevard was first divided into two halves. Each half was then moved by about 25 metres at an angle of 33 degrees to its original position. The work took five hours and 40 minutes. Most remarkably, the residents were not evacuated. One resident set a glass of water on the balcony railing. When the whole operation was over, she noticed that not a drop had spilled. In order to be able to move such a huge structure, it was first cut away from the foundations. A space was dug underneath the structure where special rails and rollers were installed. The building was placed on a temporary steel support frame, under which were centrally controlled hydraulic jacks. These enabled the entire block to be lifted evenly. Wooden support structures were also used for stabilisation, forming crossed stacks of timber. Once the appropriate height was reached, the structure was set on a running platform, which allowed the building to be transported safely to its new location. Older technologies used manually operated screw jacks, but by the 1980s hydraulics already allowed operations with much greater precision and control.
When ideology changed cities
The story of the displaced block from Alba Iulia would not be complete without a political context. The whole operation took place during a period of intense urban transformation in Romania, carried out at the behest of Nicolae Ceaușescu. The communist dictator, inspired by a visit to North Korea in 1971 and the Juche (juchi) ideology, introduced an extensive programme of ‘systematisation’ in the country, i.e. the radical reconstruction of urban and rural spaces under the banner of building a modern, socialist society. In this way, many valuable areas of cities, towns and villages were destroyed. Ceaușescu was known for his ability to spontaneously point out a building during his walks through cities and declare it ‘incompatible’ with the new order. This was especially true of churches and historic buildings. Some went under the pick, others, like the block in Alba Iulia, were luckier and… moved on.
Source: rarehistoricalphotos.com, visitalbaiulia.com
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A block in Alba Iulia – an outline of the past and today. Photo: Google Earth
