Moving In

On two cold pre-dawn mornings last winter and spring, Jeff Monroe of Quilcene and a surprisingly small crew consisting of his brother-in-law and nephew, wife and father moved the Bainbridge Island Historical Society's two buildings from Strawberry Hill Park to downtown Winslow.

The first to go was the museum's annex, a 40-foot-long portable building that had served as storage for artifacts and the curator's office. But first Monroe had to move the schoolhouse out of the way.

"He's going to turn the schoolhouse around 180 degrees and move it south about 20 yards," said Tom Shields, project construction manager.

Asked how he was going to do that, Monroe's eyes got big, and he said, "I don't know!" Then he proceeded to do just that with the help of a truck-mounted winch and three self-leveling four-wheeled dollies mounted beneath the schoolhouse's foundation beams.

Before dawn Sunday, Jan. 18, Monroe put his dollies under the annex and pulled the structure onto High School Road. Surprising many bystanders, he headed the building west, not east, down to Fletcher Bay Road, then north to New Brooklyn Road.

Then he had a straight shot east to Madison Avenue, avoiding the steep hills and low-hanging wires the building would have had to traverse if he had tried to take the building east on High School Road, Monroe said.

Monroe's next challenge was to bend the long building around Bainbridge Island's new Roundabout at the intersection of Madison and High School Road. But he had a trick up his sleeve. As the driver of the truck towing the building inched his vehicles forward into the circle, Monroe walked alongside clutching an electronic controller in both hands. The truck pulled the front wheels under the building to the left. Monroe toggled the joystick on his controller, making the rear wheels turn to the right, causing the building to pivot smartly around the circle.

In just minutes, the driver was heading south in front of the Bainbridge Library. The rest was a cakewalk. The parade turned left onto Knechtel Road to avoid wires and trees farther south, then turned onto Ericksen for the downhill run to the new site. After pulling the building onto the site around 11 a.m., Monroe and his crew broke for lunch. A few days later, Monroe and his men smeared Ivory soap on the steel beams under the annex and slid the building onto its new foundation.

Although the schoolhouse is shorter than the annex, it is much taller and wider. So tall in fact that the historical society had to hire crews from the three major suppliers of power, telephone and cable service on the island to go with Monroe and his crew to move or disconnect the cables along the building's path. Monroe and the utility crews had major problems coordinating their schedules. Weeks went by. Finally, everyone agreed to do the move Wednesday, Feb. 25.

This time, Monroe would have to bring the building straight down Madison and make a left-hand turn into the City Hall parking lot directly west of the building's new home. It was an all-day affair. The whole town turned out for the event, lining the sidewalks along Madison Avenue from the Roundabout to City Hall.

People took bets that Monroe never would be able to make the turn into the parking lot. When he did, everyone cheered. Mayor Darlene Kordonowy watched the performance with most of the rest of the city staff, shook hands with the crew and posed for pictures. But Monroe wasn't done yet. The exhausted crew parked the building in the Bainbridge Performing Arts parking lot and went home. Days later, they inched the building eastward to the museum site and slid it onto the foundation around the building's new basement.

For the next three months, Reijnen Construction Company built a new entryway between the two buildings, extended the annex to make more library and exhibit space and prepared it for reopening.