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Vancouver’s historic Leslie House on Hornby Street near Pacific Boulevard will soon disappear from the lot it has occupied downtown for 130 years, but it won’t be going far.

The tidy, yellow Queen Anne-style house at 1380 Hornby was built in 1888 as a home for tradesman George Washington Leslie’s family as one of the first workers’ houses in what was then a burgeoning Yaletown.

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For decades, it was better known as the homey front door to Umberto Menghi’s legendary Il Giardino restaurant, a hot spot for celebrity siting and a hangout for Vancouver society before closing in 2013.

On Tuesday, however, the heritage A-listed Leslie House will be moved — with every beam, wall and window intact — down the lane to an out-of-the-way spot as the first stage of a restoration project within Grosvenor Americas’ overall redevelopment of the entire corner of Hornby and Pacific.

“It is an incredibly valuable building,” historically speaking, said Don Luxton, heritage expert and consultant, which makes it important to preserve. “It is one of the very oldest surviving houses in the city of Vancouver, probably one of three, four or five that could arguably claim to be the oldest one of all.”