A 130-year-old grand, red-brick mansion on Sherbourne Street, just south of Bloor, is getting a new lease on life.

The Gooderham mansion has been hoisted onto massive yellow steel beams ahead of its big move in the next two to three weeks.

Laurie McCulloch of McCulloch Building Movers told 680 News the heritage building will actually be moved twice – back about nine metres then forward about 25 metres.

“The house has to come as close to the street as it can, to allow for the tower that’s going up behind,” McCulloch said. “It’s going to be an apartment building, which is unusual in itself because they haven’t built big apartments in a long time.”

The house weighs about 900 tonnes.

First a private home for the Gooderham family, of Gooderham and Worts fame, it was repurposed as a girls’ school before being transformed into its current use, a residential hotel. Its claim to fame, beyond being one of the few still-standing heritage homes, is that legendary writer Ernest Hemingway lived there in the 1920s.

McCulloch’s Whitby-based company is the same one that moved the James Cooper mansion next door. The Cooper is now part of a condo tower.