What do the Savvinskoye Courtyard, the Moscow Mayor’s Office, ancient Egyptian temples and a 15th century belfry have in common? They were all physically relocated by the power of creative engineering. Below are some responses by today’s architects.

Ruben Arakelyan, architect, co-curator of the Moscow Architectural Biennale, and head of WALL, an architecture firm:

There are two aspects to this - psychological and technical. Psychologically, the relocation of a huge building causes bewilderment. People don’t understand how a multi-storey building weighing 20,000 tonnes can be moved. However, engineers see it as solvable problem.

This technology is complicated but clear-cut. A building is encased in a rigid frame near the foundation where it will be cut. The frame is strengthened with intermediate diagonal links. Then the building is cut from its foundation. Large jacks slowly raise it. Then large rails and rollers are put underneath the building and it is slowly moved. It takes between six months and a year to prepare for a move and about five or six days to do it, depending on the distance.

Boris Pasternak, architect, city planner and deputy chairman of the scientific and methodological council at Moscow’s Department of Cultural Heritage:

Relocation technology is more archaic than modern. It’s similar to the construction of the Egyptian pyramids where enormous human resources were used. No doubt, this is a phenomenon of the Soviet era that’s related to the character of its economic and social relations.

Kalanchyovskaya Street building: the first attempt was a success

A large expansion of the Nikolayevskaya Railway yard was launched in 1897. The construction site included a mansion belonging to Jane McGill (Yevgeniya McGill), a British subject and an honored resident of Moscow, who owned a cement plant on Kalanchyovskaya Street. The house would have been demolished if not for the initiative of engineer Osip Fyodorovich. He suggested moving it a hundred metres. The owner happily accepted the suggestion and even paid for the work.

“The building is bound in three spots across its walls by iron rods, and braces are put in the windows and doors. To reduce the building’s weight, the plaster was broken off, and all partitions, doors and floors taken out. Special orifices were made in all walls above the foundation through which crossties and large rails were placed. Rollers were placed under the frame and the building was then moved with jacks and winches a distance of 20 sagenes…” (Osip Fyodorovich, Niva magazine, 1898).

In just a few days, the building, weighing 1,840 tonnes, was moved 100 metres to the west and placed on a new foundation. It is now located at 32/61 Kalanchyovskaya Street.

The engineer was so confident of success that he instructed his daughter to tell passer-byes about the move. She was supposed to yell: “Attention! A building is moving!”

Moving buildings in the Soviet era

A plan to relocate buildings was launched after the endorsement of the Master Plan for the Reconstruction of Moscow in 1935. It provided for the expansion of existing roads and the construction of new ones. Red lines appeared on the city map. The buildings beyond them were scheduled for demolition. However, some survived for various reasons. Most of them were simply removed from the roads that led to a bright Communist future. An office for structure relocation was established in 1936 to employ engineers from Metrostroy (metro construction company). Later it was called a trust on disassembling and moving buildings. Emmanuel Gendel, who had been in charge of consolidating building foundations near the metro lines, was appointed chief engineer.

Emmanuel Gendel (1903–1994) — Soviet engineer and builder, an authority on moving and straightening buildings and restoration technology. His most famous projects included the relocation of buildings on Tverskaya Street, the straightening of minarets in Samarkand, and the belfries in Yaroslavl and Bolshiye Vyazemy.

No obstacles for a new bridge. Moving a building on Sadovnicheskaya Street

The trust’s (trust for disassembling and moving structures) first big project was to move a building on Osipenko Street (now Sadovnicheskaya Street) in 1937. The L-shaped building obstructed construction of the new Krasnokholmsky Bridge. Gendel decided to split the building into two sections, leave the smaller section in place, and shift the longer section, turning it 19 degrees. The residents were not forced to leave the building during this move. Furthermore, using cables and flexible pipes, the water system, sewerage, electricity, radio and telephone lines all continued to function during the move. The building was moved on rollers along a bed of 37 rails. The two sections were then rejoined in their new configuration. The building stood until 1967, when a household gas explosion destroyed it. One section of the building was preserved, while a modern glass building now stands on the site of the other section.

“Carrying out the 1935 general urban development plan and expanding city thoroughfares necessitated the move of a number of buildings, most of which had historical and architectural value,” Boris Pasternak said. “It was the desire to preserve these buildings that motivated the city to move them or to shift their angle.”

Large-scale transformations in Soviet Moscow were not related to the engineering rivalry between the two superpowers, but were done for objective reasons.

Operations and operations

In May 1940, the Moscow Central Eye Hospital was moved from Gorky Street (now Tverskaya Street). The 13 000-tonne building was to be moved from the central avenue to a pre-built ground floor on a side street, with the façade facing the side street.

It is said that no one at the hospital knew the exact date of the move and even while the work was underway, the doctors continued performing operations. People who had come to visit friends and relatives during this time found only the exposed foundations and saw the building on its way to its new site. The spectacle was such that they surely felt the need to see a doctor, not an eye doctor but a psychiatrist.

Gendel’s relatives recall that he was so confident in the project’s success that he had his daughter warn passers-by of the building’s move. She was to stand there and yell: “Look out, the building’s moving!”

The hospital is still in use today and is now located at 7 Mamonovsky Pereulok.

Mossoviet Building

The Mossoviet building was one of the biggest challenges for the trust. For a start, the building had a complicated shape and the structural load on the front of the building was unevenly distributed. Secondly, the ground floor of this former governor general’s residence was a ballroom, in other words, a large open space without structural supports. Thirdly, the order came from above to move the building including the basement, where important state documents were stored. Following the now established tradition, the engineers decided to move the building with its occupants still inside and without shutting off the utilities.

Some of the trust’s employees are said to have quit their jobs upon hearing of the conditions for the Mossoviet building move. This is understandable; you could hardly expect a lenient fate if you ended up burying party bosses beneath a pile of rubble. To move the building intact, including the basement, the engineers had to first dig a deep pit around the building and along the path to the new site. They then lifted the building from its foundations. The move took place at a depth of four metres. It was a success overall, but sections of the walls developed cracks. Later, 24 metal columns were built into the building during reconstruction. Now the building at 13 Tverskaya Street, houses Moscow’s City Hall.

The Savvinskoye Courtyard

This building was built in 1907 and run by the Savvino-Storozhevsky Monastery as rental flats. It was home to communal flats during the Soviet era.

“The Savvinskoye lodgings, with its façade covered with varicoloured ceramic tiles, is one of the most successful examples of the national-romantic art nouveau style, combining modern materials and designs with old Russian architectural traditions and motifs (William Brumfield, Geography of Art Nouveau in Moscow: Aesthetics in an Urbanist Context).

It is hard to say exactly what motivated the decision to preserve the building, historical value or some other reason, but it survived. Using the already tried-and-tested method, the building was lifted onto rollers and moved to its new site on November 4, 1939. It moved at a speed of around 10 metres per hour.

“When the decision was made to move the former Savvinskoye Courtyard, this building of flats, preparations were carried out under the guise of renovation work,” recalled Ruben Arakelyan. “The engineers realised that if the building’s residents knew about the upcoming move, panic would ensue and would hinder the whole process. The building was moved at night, while everyone was asleep. The process went so smoothly that none of the residents even noticed.”

To see this architectural landmark today, step into the courtyard of number 6 Tverskaya Street.

Preparations to move a building take at least six months, and sometimes the road needs to be widened in just a month. Thus, today it’s easier to demolish a building and build it on a new site.

Sytin’s house

The Trud newspaper journalists were lucky professionally. In the late 1970s, the editorial board was located in Sytin’s house on Gorky (Tverskaya) Street. The reporters were lucky in that they got to take part in relocating the building. It was moved 47 metres along Tverskaya Street.

“At 5 am when dawn was breaking, the last preparations were complete and the command to turn on the air pump was given. The indicator needles showed 170 tonnes of pressure. The powerful shiny cylinders of four large pneumatic jacks touched the steel beams on which the building was resting. Ready to be moved, the building slowly crept forward on rails along this major Moscow thoroughfare. Thick steel rollers rotate at the speed of a watch’s second hand, and the huge building was almost imperceptibly moving toward Mayakovsky Square …” (The Trud. 11 April 1979. Viktor Tolstov’s report ‘House Hits the Road’).

Chekhov Moscow Art Theatre

The last high-profile event in the saga of Moscow relocations was moving the Chekhov Moscow Art Theatre (the old Moscow Academic Art Theatre building) during renovation in 1983. The building was cut along the curtain line and the stage was moved 20 metres inward. The vacated area was filled with new stage space to improve the staging props and equipment.

The move was based on Emmanuel Gendel’s well-proven process, but he was not there personally. Gendel had become such a well-known building relocation expert that he was often sent abroad.

International experience: ancient Egyptian temples, terminals and lighthouses

Buildings and structures have been relocated and continue to be relocated all over the world. Below are some examples.

Hotel on Coney Island (United States)

A huge hotel named the Brighton Beach Hotel on Сoney Island (a peninsula, formerly an island in Brooklyn) was moved 150 metres onto the island in April 1888. The plot of land where the wood-frame building stood was being eroded by the ocean.

The three-storey building, 150 metres long and weighing 5,000 tonnes was raised on large hydraulic jacks and then lowered onto 112 custom built bogies. The bogies rested on 24 rails laid out under the building. The building was moved by six small steam engines.

Indiana Bell Telephone Company, Indianapolis, USA

The relocation of the Indiana Bell headquarters building in Indianapolis in 1930 was one of the largest relocation projects of its time.

The building was becoming too small for the growing number of staff needed to service the increasing number of subscribers, and so it was decided in 1929 that the building should be demolished to vacate the site for a new, larger building. However, Kurt Vonnegut Sr., an architect and partner in the well-established firm of Vonnegut & Bohn and the father of noted American novelist Kurt Vonnegut Jr, proposed moving the building. The 11,000-tonne building was moved 15 metres south, rotated 90 degrees and moved 30 metres west, all in about 30 days, while 600 employees continued to provide telephone service to 170,000 subscribers without interruption. It was a breakthrough project that used flexible communication lines, something Soviet engineers later used in building relocation projects. The Indiana Bell staff entered and left the building via a sheltered passageway that moved with the building.

Ancient Egyptian temples

The impressive Abu Simbel temples were carved in rock in the 13th century BC. In the 1960s, or 33 centuries later, the Egyptian authorities decided to build the Aswan High Dam on the Nile, with Soviet technical assistance. The artificial lake was rising rapidly and would have covered the rock temples completely. A salvation campaign was led by UNESCO and the Egyptian government, with donations – about $80 million – collected from around the world. Between 1964 and 1968, the entire site was carefully cut into large blocks, dismantled, lifted and reassembled in a new location 65 metres higher, on a rock, and 200 metres back from the river. The blocks were re-assembled and cemented together at the new site, with vast domes of reinforced concrete built behind them for support.

21st century

In 2000, the 59-metre high Cape Hatteras Light Station, in North Carolina, USA, weighing about 4,000 tonnes, was moved 870 metres from its initial site on purpose built rails.

In 2001, two 1,200-tonne wings and the 5,000-tonne central portion of the Newark International Airport terminal in New Jersey, USA, were moved 1,130 metres to a new site.

In 2007, a 660-tonne stone church in Germany dated to the 14th century was transported 12 kilometres by truck to a nearby village to make place for an expanding coal pit.

In April 2013, an 18,000-tonne residential building built in 1908 in Baku was moved 10 metres to protect it as a historical and architectural monument. It was the first building relocation project in Azerbaijan.

The Bologna Bell Tower

The first recorded relocation of a building took place in Bologna, Italy, in the 15th century. Architect and engineer Aristotle Fioravanti moved the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore bell tower to create space for a new city administration building. A pyramidal wooden cage was built around the bell tower to prevent it from cracking. The 24-metre high bell tower was moved 13 metres with a block and tackle system, which was an amazing feat for the time.

Moscow was not built in a day…

…and it continues to expand. But the practice of relocating buildings seems to have receded into the past, the period of five-year planning periods, the Stakhanovite and Khrushchev’s corn campaign. But they say that history repeats itself. Could buildings in Moscow still be relocated?

“Technologically, it could be done even more effectively now,” said Boris Pasternak. “However, I can’t imagine anyone proposing it. First, there is such a thing as the perception of historical heritage. Old buildings are only interesting when they are seen in their historical surroundings. When they are relocated, rebuilt or renovated, they lose part of their identity. And second, technology has advanced to the point that the building relocations of the past seem archaic.

“New construction and infrastructure projects should take into account the historical structures that make cityscapes more diverse and interesting. At the same time, new projects should look to the future and project the city’s image 25 years from now.”

Says Ruben Arakelyan: “I believe there were objective reasons for the large-scale relocation projects in the Soviet period, rather than simply the US-Soviet race of engineering ambition. The city no longer satisfied the requirements of the rapidly growing population, which is why the main streets were widened under the 1935 master plan. Today, Moscow is being developed even faster, just as the other megacities, with migration and the growing number of people and vehicles. Construction technologies have advanced a lot, and there are new requirements for the conditions and speed of road renovation. Preparations for moving a building can last at least six months, whereas you can widen a road within a month. So, it’s easier to demolish a building and rebuild it somewhere else.

“However, considering the many scandals over the demolition of historical buildings, it might be better to allay the public’s concerns by relocating buildings in some cases.”