The saga of the house stuck in the middle of a South Austin street � not far from where we live � has the city staring.

How does that happen?�Well, it�s never easy moving a house.

Remember when they transported�the Walter Tips House, a stately Victorian threatened with demolition, from the Bremond Block area downtown to 2336 S. Congress Avenue at Oltorf Street to serve as a bank in 1975? Some people claimed the Congress Avenue Bridge could not sustain it. Others swear that the house�s�pigeon residents went along for the ride.

Then there was the time that they moved the O. Henry House from the northwest corner of East Fourth and Trinity streets to its current location on the north verge of Brush Square at 409 E. Fifth, where it serves as a museum. That�s only about a block away, but it was still a big deal, the process documented in the papers and carefully archived.

Of course, after the 1900 hurricane, Galveston built a seawall, then raised�hundreds�city blocks as much as 11 feet. Now that�s a lot of house-moving, upwards.

I don�t know how they did it, but a few years ago, a developer moved a big, beautiful Victorian from Marlin to our neighborhood and squeezed it into regular-sized lot. I toured the dream house after its expert renovation and thought what it would be like to live there. A movie star bought it.

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