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By MICHELLE LESHKO; Special to the Times Leader
Friday, July 12, 1996     Page: 3A

WILKES-BARRE — The flower pot didn’t make it. But the house did.
   
A South Welles Street house was put on wheels Thursday morning and moved,
ever so slowly, to a permanent spot at Hancock Street and Rose Lane, almost
three blocks away.
    The moving crew, Verling Wolfe of Lancaster, employed four Amish men to
relocate the 50-year-old, two-story building using two trucks and two
bulldozers as crowds of onlookers watched the house move toward its new
address.
   
The move took 4 hours and cost $30,000. The flower pot, dangling from a
hook at the rear of the house, was the only thing that shook loose, cracking
on the street.
   
Originally owned by the Stegmaier Brewery Co., the house needed to either
be moved or be razed to make way for parking spaces for an $18 million federal
project currently under way along Wilkes-Barre Boulevard.
   
Demolition crews are razing sections of the old brewery in anticipation of
a massive renovation. The home originally was used as a hospitality home for
brewery guests and was the site of numerous company parties. The site vacated
by the home will become a parking lot.
   
In recent years, the building was utilized as a group home for four
mentally disabled men. A key goal of the relocation was to keep the house and
the men in the same neighborhood, said Richard Adams, chief executive officer
of Human Services and Consultants in Kingston, which operates the group home.
   
“It’s a win-win situation,” Adams said. “They get to live in the same
neighborhood and the city gets their land for the Stegmaier project.
   
“There is a real history to this house.”
   
The movers worked at securing the home until 9 p.m. Wednesday and returned
to the site at 6:45 a.m. Thursday after returning from Lancaster.
   
“These men have an unbelievable work ethic,” Adams said “They actually
started working on Monday to get the house prepared for the move.”
   
First, Adams said, the house was jacked up and the foundation was removed.
Then, the house was lowered onto logs with wheels and secured by chains. The
logs were on the back of a flatbed truck used relocate the house.
   
The city acquired the house through eminent domain.
   
A 50-year-old house being relocated reaches South Welles Street and Amber
Lane.
   
TIMES LEADER PHOTOS/FRED ADAMS
   
Mike Bylina, an employee of a Lancaster moving company, pulls a stop sign
out of the way of the house on Hancock Street.