If you’ve driven by Old Town House in the last couple of days you’ve see the beginnings of the Big Move!
Copp & Sons Building Movers of Cumberland have been at work. They’ve inserted steel girders beneath the building for support.
The front porch has been removed. Now the Town House looks as it looked for years until the porch was added in the 1940s: A spare, no-nonsense building. The porch, weary and dilapidated in recent years, will be carefully reconstructed at Old Town House’s new home at 475 Walnut Hill Road.
Come Monday, December 13, real work will begin. The roof will be removed and the building will be braced inside and out. Copp’s crew will carefully separate the Town House in two so it can move down the road easily. (The building measures 44’ x 33’ … Memorial Highway’s road bed is 22’.)
When will Old Town House finally move down the road? With all luck—on Wednesday, December 15. The timing would be just about perfect. Why? Because the weather report for next week looks like clear sailing (or motoring, as the case may be!) from Monday until Thursday. And we don’t want the interior of the building to be exposed to any rain or snow–we want to protect the floor and wainscoting.
The next big task for our project manager, Rob Jeffrey, is to get the building carefully set on its new foundation. And then, as quickly as possible, the new trusses that Hancock Lumber has donated to the project will be lifted into place, plywood will be added, and … THEN the weather can come!
It’s taken patience, faith, and optimism. And we’re glad that the community has stuck with us.
We still have a long way to go but this first big step is cause for celebration and relief.
We’ll send out updates as they occur. We’ll be taking plenty of photos and we encourage you to do the same. Thanks to all!