Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 27, 1994 TAG: 9405270106
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Thursday morning, 56 Wells Ave. N.E. became 18 Gilmer Avenue N.E.
The address change required a 60-gear truck, eight daring house movers and three hours of powerline-brushing suspense.
With all the city hall and Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority people looking on, the symbolism of the move was nearly as weighty as the 46-ton house.
City Manager Bob Herbert said it would have been cheaper to demolish the house and another one that will be moved next-door.
``But we recognize the importance of these houses to the neighborhood,'' he said.
For years now, the city has been in prickly negotiations over how restoration of the Hotel Roanoke and the widening of nearby Wells Avenue would affect some of the oldest homes in Gainsboro.
The Historic Gainsboro Preservation District didn't get what it wanted - for Wells Avenue to be left alone.
The city, with the support of four other Gainsboro organizations, did change the street's realignment, saving homes that would have been torn down on Gilmer Avenue.
Evelyn Richardson, a waitress and a cloakroom clerk at the hotel, didn't live to see her house moved. She died in 1992.
Jacob Barnett Jr., who owned the house moved Thursday, is in a nursing home.
Evelyn Bethel, president of Historic Gainsboro, lives a block away, but couldn't bear to watch. She's relieved the houses were saved, but still, she said, it's sad to see them uprooted. ``I found myself getting so filled up, I didn't go over there.''
The price tag for the preservation will be about $400,000. The Virginia Department of Transportation paid $188,000 for them - $87,000 to Richardson's heirs and $101,000 to Barnett. Even if the houses had been torn down, VDOT would have paid that much, city spokeswoman Michelle Bono said.
The city also is paying $130,000 to move the two houses and another $80,000 to fix them up.
The housing authority will sell the houses to low- to moderate-income families. Bono said no one will be expected to pay anywhere near what the government's put into them. ``I think we can say we will not try to recoup our cost,'' she said.
People on Gilmer Avenue were glad to see vacant spots being filled by two of the biggest and stateliest homes around. Both are more than 100 years old.
Henry Olichwier, a retired furniture worker from Chicago, will have a neighbor next-door where there was only a weedy lot before.
He's waited five years for curbing and a sidewalk. Maybe with all the new attention to his block, he said, he'll get his sidewalk.
Hairdresser Thelma Washington sat on her high porch and watched the house inching down Gilmer. ``It's a nice house,'' she said.
She's close to retirement and is glad the city changed its Wells Avenue plans and did not take her house. ``I like in here just fine.''
Evelyn Williams, a retired hairdresser, watched the house-moving spectacle from her cool front porch, too. ``Back in the '40s this was one of the most beautiful neighborhoods in the city of Roanoke," she said.
Her neighbor Eddie Buey figures somebody eventually will take his house and others nearby. ``They're gonna get 'em,'' he said. ``I done had my day.''
Xavier Fox watched the house-moving with acute curiosity. As a child, he lived near the new location of the Richardson house. His mother planted the pine that stands there still.
He had a dog named Skip. His neighbors were the Watkinses and the Whites. The Watkinses raised chickens and one night, Skip barked everyone awake before a chicken-coop fire spread to the house.
That was his old yard earthmovers were clawing into Thursday morning as they prepared the sites. ``Probably find my old shooting marbles back up in there somewhere.''
David L. Hill Jr., president of Hill House Movers Inc., is the fifth generation in his family to move houses.
His son, sixth-generation mover David III, drove the truck Thursday, responding to his dad's elaborate hand signals and shouts as he backed the house into its new site.
The elder Hill has been moving buildings for 29 years. He's getting close to 2,000 moves now, and the ones on Gilmer are pipsqueaks compared to some.
In 1985, he moved the 1,200-ton, four-story Orkney Springs Hotel in Mount Jackson. He once helped his father move a Marion house 10 times heavier than the one he hauled this week.
Fox and his wife, Evelyn, brought their five nieces and nephews to watch. They have five children of their own and Xavier Fox kept thinking he might apply for that house.
``I might just get back in there,'' he said.
by CNB