In November 1930, one of the greatest achievements of modern engineering in Indiana, USA.

An architect and engineer team returned a 11,000 -ton telephone power plant 90 degrees without stopping 600 employees.

We are on a trip to 1888.

In order to fully explain this rotation process, we need to go to Bohn & Mueller Architecture, founded in 1888 by German-American architects Bernard Vonnegut and Arthur Bohn in Indianapolis.

In 1907, Bohn & Mueller designed the Indiana Bell, a 7 -storey building for Central Union Telephone Company.

The building was later included in the United States’ National Historical Places Registry, since it was a module of Indianapolis in 1982 and a module of the city’s German-American architectural heritage.

If the building was destroyed, the telephone power plant would also be disrupted.

In 1929, Indian Bell Telephone Company acquired Central Union, including offices designed by German -born architects 20 years ago. Since Indiana Bell had many employees, the first plan was to demolish the building and build a center with a much larger capacity in the same area.

They also assigned Bohn & Mueller for this project. The design was not only of offices. That period included the design of an invitation center hand -operated by the company’s own employee. If the original building was destroyed, there would be interruption at the power plant.

Bernard’s son Kurt Vonnegut proposed an other alternative.

Kurt offered to move the building to the other place while the invitation service was continuing and it was found logical, and the works were started.

11 thousand tons of building, 34 days of brand new location was moved 16 meters to 90 degrees. The invitation service of the building, gas, water and electricity were not cut. The transport was completed in November 1930.

So how did they do that?

The 7 -storey building was removed using hydraulic jacks before. The movement was then performed with hydraulic cylinders on a concrete surface on a 75 -ton spruce beams specially placed for this target.

While the building focused on a cylinder, the staff positioned the next one and continued. Thus, the building was moved at a speed of 40 centimeters per hour. Even the entrance hall of the building was connected to a portable entrance that allowed the rotation movement and keeping it open to access.

Compared to the records of Telephone Collectors International (TCI), some of the 600 building employees show that they do not notice the displacement of the structure!

The Indiana Bell building went down in history as one of the first buildings in the world where it was changed instead of collapse.

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