Posted on 11/26/2022 10:55:15 PM PST by skr
A break from politics for ingenuity in construction. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGegneT9KfQ&t=1s
Indiana Bell Central Office building, all 11,000 tons, moved 90 degrees while employees worked inside.
Kurt Vonnegut's father was the local architect who came up with the idea.
Excuse me, but I had always assumed that they had more than one Central Office.
The video’s title wasn’t that specific. This was the one in Indianapolis in 1929, as per the first 11 seconds of the video. It was the Central Union Telephone Company’s building, which was then purchased by Indiana Bell and meant to be demolished.
moved 90 degrees just for the better view?....
I’ll tell you something else: Whoever wrote that paper doesn’t know the first thing about Kurt Vonnegut.
in order to keep the old building and add a larger one to the property.
I’m glad you enjoyed it. I found it fascinating on more than one level. How did all that work and expense beat out razing and rebuilding? It probably helped that building codes were less restrictive at that time. What was it like to go work inside, knowing that the structure was moving, even if it was ever so slowly? What did the construction crew think about the architect? Maybe we don’t want to know, lol! Scooting 11k tons, quite a feat.
What a fascinating story. Thanks for posting this!
There are, Typically one per # prefix.
WOW ! that was amazing , 11 thousand tons .
How did all that work and expense beat out razing and rebuilding?
Once built, a central office cannot really be moved to another site. To many moving parts to reroute.
A 100 year old copper line two blocks away from the CO building was hit in downtown Portland Maine this summer. It it effected individual phone service to people with land lines 10 to 12 blocks away. It took several days for them to get their service back.
That original CO building and a newer (70s era as opposed to 1900s) building next door have been sold for different types of redevelopment. The main building will continue to have cables running into it going to switches of some type servicing several different communication providers.
Thank you for the explanation.
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