Brief
In November 1930, in Indiana, United States, one of the great feats of modern engineering was executed: a team of architects and engineers moved an 11,000-ton (22-million pound) telephone exchange without ever suspending its operations either basic supplies for the 600 employees who worked inside.
Insight
In order to comprehend this milestone, we have to go back to 1888, when the architecture firm Vonnegut, Bohn & Mueller (later known as Vonnegut & Bohn) was founded in Indianapolis by German-American architects Bernard Vonnegut and Arthur Bohn.
In 1907, Vonnegut, Bohn & Mueller designed the Indiana Bell Building in Evansville, a 7-story building for the Central Union Telephone Company; an Art-Deco building later included in 1982 in the National Register of Historic Places of the United States for being part of the historical identity of Indianapolis as part of the German-American architectural legacy of the city.
In 1929 the Indiana Bell Telephone Company acquired the Central Union, including the offices designed 20 years earlier by German-born architects. As Indiana Bell had a large staff of employees, the initial plan was to demolish the building to build, in the same area, headquarters of much greater capacity. For this project, they commissioned Vonnegut, Bohn, & Mueller.
The design did not comprise offices only but also featured the design of a call center which, at that time, was operated manually by the company’s own staff. The demolition of the original building would imply an immediate cut in the supply of services.
Kurt Vonnegut, Bernard’s son, was already working with his father at the firm when the phone company came up with the project that included the demolition of the previous building. Kurt proposed an innovative alternative: relocate the work, maintain the continuity of call services, and thus not discard a fully functional infrastructure.
Kurt’s proposal was approved by the company, and for 34 days the 11,000-ton building was moved 16 meters from its original location and rotated 90 degrees, a process that was completed in mid-November 1930, without interrupting or the service of calls nor the supply of gas, water, and electricity of the building.
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