Time for spring cleaning? Don’t like the view? Move (your house, that is). Although it may seem hard to believe, moving houses was not uncommon a hundred years ago. Indeed, one Norfolk resident recalled the story of a young child arriving home from school to find her house on higher ground, as the soil was considered too damp where it stood before. The house in this 1911 Marie Kendall photograph is pictured on Mountain Road, on its way from its former location on Greenwoods Road East to a site on Westside Road. A brief notice in the newspaper kept track of its progress as it approached the Village Green: “It is now nearing the Scoville shop … it will be some time before the building arrives at its destination.” One can imagine what annoyance a similar traffic tie-up would cause today. While we do not know how long the move took, the process of transportation is evident in the photograph, as a system of ropes and pulleys gave the two-horsepower movers the mechanical advantage to lug the house to its new home.

 —Ann Havemeyer

Photo courtesy of the Norfolk Historical Society.