I wish I had been an engineer – there, I said it!  I love reading about HOW people moved large structures – particularly without the aid of engines.  I am, I confess, the owner of more than one copy of ANCIENT ENGINEERS.

New England’s first settlers were always moving buildings.  It was usually easier and cheaper to move a building than to rebuild it.  Sometimes buildings were taken apart and then moved; sometimes they were moved in their entirety.  Sometimes entire towns moved:  during the Revolution Tory residents of Castine, Maine took their houses apart, loaded them on boats, and removed houses and themselves to St. Andrews in New Brunswick.  And in the 1930s, residents of the barrier islands lying off Virginia’s Eastern Shore, finally packed up their houses onto barges and moved them to the so-called  mainland – just nominally safer from the hurricanes tearing into and up the cost.  

MOVING a house is, in theory, relatively simple, and size not necessarily a problem. Based on moving principles used since the ancient Egyptians even the most gigantic load can be skidded a short distance, rolled over a long one or levered the last fraction of an inch until its position is perfect. 

And, of course, not just houses were or are moved: a  North Carolina lighthouse was moved in 1999 days before a major hurricane struck and a New Jersey airport terminal was moved in 2001.

It’s really fitting that the headquarters for Historic New England was itself a moved building.  After the Civil War, Boston experienced a building boom. Rather than move old buildings, developers demolished them to create wider streets with new structures equipped with indoor plumbing, electric lights, and other conveniences.

When Cambridge Street was to be straightened and widened, the Harrison Gray Otis House, designed by Charles Bulfinch in 1796, was in the way. Fortunately, it belonged to the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities. SPNEA, founded in 1910 by William Sumner Appleton who helped to save the Revere House, was able to purchase a group of four nineteenth century row houses behind the Otis House; they demolished two to make space for the Otis House and retained the other two for office, collections, and museum space. 

The house was jacked up and moved in 1925 back nearly 43 feet. At the rate of seven feet a day, it took nearly a week to get the building onto its new foundation.  It has continued to serve as the location for administrative offices and a house museum for what is now known as Historic New England, the oldest and largest regional historic preservation organization in the nation.

Not long after Bob and I and our kids moved to Bennett Road in 1993, I learned from my neighbor Perry Hagenstein, a former Wayland Historical Society president and friend to many of us, that both the house behind him (4 Winthrop Terrace) and the house next to him, 17 Bennett Road, were “moved” up the hill from Cochituate Road.

(Point to Horace Heard House and to Wight’s house on map)

This house was built by Horace Heard in 1840 date on the east side of Cochituate Road.  It was moved by his grandson Dwight Heard, who, after marrying in 1893, settled in Phoenix in 1895 due to Heard’s chest ailments. Dwight Heard returned in 1899 to move this house east and up a quite steep hill.  He went further and  

Laid out Wayland’s first genuine real estate development with 18 lots  — one half to ¾ acre along Winthrop Road and Winthrop Terrace.  

As part of this development, Boston Post Road was moved.  You can see several houses and a tannery at one point on the north side between the State Road 20 (Boston Post Road) and the Mill Brook.  If one looks into the woods just west of 213 Boston Post Road, one can remains of the retaining wall along the old state road.  The Heards returned to Phoenix to found the world famous Heard Museum, dedicated to Native American art and culture.

John Burt Wight (b. 1818) was a long time Unitarian Minister in Wayland (formerly East Sudbury). Rev. Wight became East Sudbury’s first Unitarian minister when the Church split in 1827; in 1856, he became the first superintendent of the Wayland schools, and in 1851, while serving in the Massachusetts legislature, he introduced legislation to establish and maintain libraries at public expense. Rev. Wight was also instrumental in the establishment of the state’s first public library in Wayland in 1848.

The JB Wight House remained in his family until 1908 when it was sold to Arthur Nichols and moved to what is now 17 Bennett Road, now home of Werner and Elaine Gossels. I’ve always assumed this was first accessed from Cochituate Road but perhaps Bennett Road was built as a long driveway to this moved house? Or, it was moved as part of the Bennett Road development that followed shortly thereafter.

Next is Old Sudbury Road – perhaps the road with the most “moved” houses. Certainly, as you know or will find out this evening, this road was also the second site of this very house we’re in now – from 1878 until 1962. 

Built in about 1828 by Luther Gleason, Sr. (1771-1844) on the Gleason property known as the “Street Farm,” located north of here on the west side of Old Sudbury Road (maybe at community garden area). This house was moved to its present location by Luther Gleason, Jr. in 1846 — closer to the center of Wayland. Helen Fitch Emery wrote that the move reflected a general abandonment of outlying farms toward development of a central village. 

The Dr. Ebenezer Ames House was built in 1830.  Its barn was moved there in 1878 when the Grout-Heard House was moved from 12 Cochituate Road to a spot slightly further north and across Old Sudbury Road. 

37 Old Sudbury Road, built in 1903, was moved from Boston Post Road (in the location of Wayland Cleaners) to Old Sudbury Road in the late 1950s by Everett Ballou — straight across the Mass Central Railroad and land to its new location.

75 Old Sudbury Road built c. 1705 was moved from North Kingston MA in 1940 to a spot high up off the road by Alan Finlay in 1940.  He was on the Planning Board and together with Gerald Henderson and others developed most of Sears Road, Claypit Hill area after Woodridge Road area.  Joan, Chris and Katie Lynch lived there for some time.

Just north of 83 Old Sudbury Road, the Samuel Stone Noyes House, stood the Goulding House built circa 1700 on a Maynard lot.. Between the Goulding and Noyes houses was Mr. Noyes’ cabinet shop which was moved to Russell’s greenhouses on Boston Post Road and is now Jack Russell’s house.

The Goulding House was moved board by board c. 1918 to Concord Road in Sudbury north of Mill Village. 

Moving south, back to Bow Road, is a house moved from north side of Bow Road (when it was known as Crescent Rd) c. 1897 by Everett “Pop” Small to the small triangular lot it lies on today… It was built less than 20 years earlier in 1879 by Francis Moore — a farmer with a large tract of land on the north side of Bow Road.  Wallace Herbert Folsom (1884-1954) —a well-known Wayland photographer — and his mother lived here for over forty years. This house then became the home of Walter (“Brownie”) and Lucy Parker, Wayland residents for over 60 years. 

13 Bow Road was built in 1841 on Old Sudbury Road and was moved to Bow Road in 1854.  The Street School, later known as the Center Primary School, was constructed of wood.  From the late 1700s until 1855 when the first High School was constructed – now the Odd Fellows Hall– East Sudbury, then Wayland, schools were district schools with many one-room structures scattered throughout town. In the early 1800s some wood schoolhouses were replaced with brick buildings while others remained wood framed. In 1897 when the new Wayland High and Grammar School—later known as the Center School (demolished in 1976) — was constructed on Cochituate Road, the district schools including this one-room schoolhouse were abandoned. This building was converted to a residence soon thereafter.  By the way, the Odd Fellows Hall was also moved north, closer to the Trinitarian Church so as to make room for the new high school in 1897.

83 Claypit Hill Road is right across from Adams Lane..  The area was called Tower Hill when Jessica Henderson moved this house in 1929 from Enfield, Ma– one of the towns evacuated and later flooded for the Quabbin Reservoir.  She undertook this project as a wedding present for her daughter and husband Sanford Palmer.  Old houses there sold for $150 to $100.  This contractor made a complete chart, numbering each piece where it was joined to the next; dismantling started with clapboards, and the outer boards of walls; removed doors, window frames and paneling, crating them all.  The floors, casing and general framework followed, and finally the great oak timbers, housed together with one-inch oak pins were removed; the oak rafters, three by six inches, mortised, tennoned and pinned with oak pins to the ridgepole.   Two fireplaces, one in living room, one in dining room, went to the roof in a v-shape and emerged as one.  At both front and rear doors were granite flagstones of more than a ton.  Took nine men two weeks to do the work; transported seven truckloads of material over the 90 miles to Wayland. They raised roof to make second story more airy; added fireplaces; added bathrooms; converted barn into garage. 

Bennett House stood at the corner Plain and Boston Post Road.

This is a more contemporary photo taken before the move to a spot behind the Exxon Station.

Not much of an improvement but at least this house was saved and reused.

Built in 1839.  By 1883, Samuel Maynard Thomas had the fifth largest farm in Wayland with 161 acres.  The town bought the farm in 1956 and in 1958 appropriated 2,275,000 for a new high school.  The house was moved across the street when the school was built in 1960.  The wonderful loamy soil was scraped off and sold off.

Moved to Natick.

206 Oxbow was just recently sold by Dick and Ellie Kilbourne. When they bought the house in 2000 they moved the house back 100 feet from the road.  b. 1755 (Edward Sherman)  or 1783 (Ephraim Sherman). Town almshouse  1831-45.