How do you move a 149-year-old building? Very slowly

Ottawa's former city registry office was on the move Saturday, at the leisurely pace of about 3.5 metres per hour.

With a 149-year-old building, it's unwise to rush.

A team of engineers was scheduled to spend aboutfive hours pushing the 500-tonne building 18 metres to the north as part of a plan to preserve, restoreand embed it intoa 21-storey tower just east of Rideau Centre at 70 Nicholas St.

The building dates back to 1874 and is one of about a dozen remaining registry offices across the province, according to Barry Padolsky,the heritage consultant at thesite. It was part of Ottawa's former judicial district, along with the former Carleton County Courthouse and county jail.

"For the last 40 years, it's been vacant," he said."And sadly so, because it's such a wonderful icon."

He explained how the team inserted a steel cradle under the building, with holes poked through the masonry to accommodate beams.Then workers jacked the whole structureup and slid it along rails at an imperceptible speed.

"They need a lot of hydraulic force to push it sideways, but it has to be pushed evenly.Otherwise it cracks, so that's what they're doing and successfully," said Padolsky.

He said collapse is a risk. The vaults inside the building can be especially tricky. But everything seemed to be proceeding as planned on Saturday afternoon.

"It's, as we speak, approaching its final location, so I'm very excited about this."

Company that helped seal up Chernobyl pitches in

The developeris Cadillac Fairview, which brought on Mammoet, a company with the self-described mission of moving "big objects," to play a leading role.

It previously helped install thecontainment dome over the destroyed reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The company also helped recover the Kursk, a Soviet nuclear submarine stuck in the 108-metre-deep seabed on the edge of the Arctic Ocean.

"So we're in very good hands," said Padolsky.

It would have been cheaper to deconstruct the building and move it in pieces, but both the city and Heritage Ottawa recommended keeping it whole as the best conservation option.

Saturday's efforts caught the eye of a handful of curious onlookers. DaveValentine said he's stopped by about 15 times, day after day,to watch the preparations and the move itself.

He said he's fascinated by the mechanics of it, and impressed that it's even possible.

"It requires quite a bit of heavy equipment to move a building," he said. "I think it's a pretty good idea. It's quite an interesting looking building."

Restored registry office could host bar or caf

The building had reached the end of the rails when CBC returned to the site on Sunday. Brian Salpeter, senior vice president of development at Cadillac Fairview, said it was successfully moved in two phases and is now in place.

Butthere's still more work left on the agenda. Padolsky explained that crews will have to dig a two-level parking garage around and under the heritage building. He called that "a major tour de force."

"The last phase will be transferring the city registry office from its temporary steel piles to the top of the concrete parking garage, and then the ice cream on top of that is restoring it," he said.

This 149-year-old building was moved 18 metres over five hours

1 year ago

Duration 1:00

A team of engineers moved Ottawa's former city registry office Saturday as part of a plan to embed it into a 21-storey tower next to Rideau Centre.

That will include replacing a previously demolished brick chimney.

The development plan for the site foresees an outdoor plaza and cafor bar at the registry office, which will intersect a three-storey glass atrium and also serve as a lobby entrance.

City registry offices were used to register and storeproperty records like deeds, mortgages and lot plans. According to a conservation plan submitted with the city, the building has the appearance of a little temple"dedicated to the sacredness of private property."

Padolsky expects that it will take about two years until it's restored, occupied and open for the public to come and marvel at the beautiful brickbarrel-vaultedceilings inside.