For many years, demolition was not the only choice when it came to a building no longer in use. Moving the structure was an alternative that was easier in the 19th century than today, since the majority of roads were dirt and didn’t have obstructions like overhead utility lines or heavy vehicular traffic. While it was mostly houses that were given new locations, the largest local building to be moved was the first Kalamazoo County courthouse (shown above), which was moved in 1883. It traveled three blocks to become a livery stable and later a laundry. Here are five of my favorite area buildings that are in different locations from their original sites:
Thomas House
613 E. Cass St., Schoolcraft
This home and office for Dr. Nathan Thomas, Kalamazoo County’s first physician, was built in 1835 at the corner of West Cass and North Centre streets. After Thomas’ marriage to Pamela Brown, in 1840, he enlarged the structure to provide space for a growing family. Three years later, the house became a station on the Underground Railroad, helping an estimated 1,500 people find freedom. After the Civil War, Thomas decided to build a new house for several reasons, including the condition of the original house. He moved the older structure to its current location, at the edge of the village, in 1868, and it is now owned by the Schoolcraft Historical Society.
Hoben House
304 Monroe St.
Allen Hoben, as president of Kalamazoo College, initiated one of the largest building campaigns in the college’s history in 1922, creating a small, intimate campus centered on a quad, or quadrangle. Hoben himself built, at his own expense, the president’s house at the southeast corner of Academy and Monroe streets. Completed in 1924, the classic Georgian-Colonial house cost $16,500 and remained a home for the college’s top administrator and their family for the next 50 years. It later became the Stryker Center, which provided programs for management development. Plans for the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership to be built on the site called for either the demolition or preservation of the house. Fortunately, new owners moved the house in June 2011 to Monroe and South streets, where it fits into the neighborhood perfectly.
Austin-Sill House
226 W. Lovell St.
Benjamin Austin, who came to Kalamazoo with his family in 1833 at age 14, was quite an industrious young man, becoming a tinsmith and watchmaker, in addition to running a store and eventually becoming a successful wagon maker. He also had great taste in architecture, building this modest brick Greek Revival home facing South Rose Street at the corner of West Lovell Street in 1846. By 1856, he built a new house, a classic Gothic Revival structure on Oakland Drive and Austin Street. Joseph Sill, Kalamazoo’s first dentist and homeopathic physician, moved Austin’s Greek Revival around to face West Lovell Street in the late 1860s for the Sill Terrace Apartments, which are still there and now surrounded by the Prange Building.
Bartholomew House
832 Elmwood St.
This temple-style Greek Revival house with Doric pillars and a unique Greek design at the cornice was built by early Kalamazoo resident Luther Trask in 1839 on the northwest corner of Woodward Avenue and West Main Street. Within a year it became the home of Frederick Woodward and his wife, Louisa, Trask’s sister, and it remained the home of the Woodward family until 1870, when they wanted a larger home. This structure was moved down Woodward Avenue to the northeast corner of Elmwood Street. The Kalamazoo Gazette reported that when the house was moved, it was a home “with sweet comforts and rich in those amiable virtues which never fail to invite cordiality.”
Burdick House
447 W. Vine St.
This Greek Revival home, completed in 1839 for Justus Burdick, originally sat on Exchange Place just south of Michigan Avenue. In 1855, after Burdick’s death, it was moved to face South Rose Street and served as a boardinghouse. In 1881, it once again needed to find a new location to make way for the newly designed Academy of Music. It took 20 days, from July 8 until July 28, to get it to its new site on the southeast corner of West Vine Street and South West Street, now Westnedge Avenue. The delay was due to a homeowner who did not want their tree branches cut to make room for the house to move, leaving the house sitting in the middle of South Rose Street for 10 days.
