Looking Back At The Time Albany Picked Up And Moved An Entire Building

Albany has its fair share of weird and wacky history. Heck, some might even say we have a lot of it.

Despite every odd and unexplainable thing that's happened in the Capital Region, one event in the late 1920s might take the cake for the 518...

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The Fort Frederick Apartments

In 1917, Albany put the finishing touches on an apartment building in the heart of the city. The Fort Fredericks Apartment Building was located at the corner of Swan Street and Washington Avenue, and planned to stay there.

That is, until the mid-1920s, when the city decided that it wanted a new building to house government offices near the capitol building. Unfortunately, the spot was already taken by the Fort Fredericks building, so the city did what any well-adjusted city would do: They moved the building.

Moving the Building

I mean that literally. They moved the building. Starting in 1926, a crew would jack the building up about two feet above the ground, place steel rollers underneath, and then place those rollers on a train track which would be moved by mules. Every day, the crew would move it about seven feet a day.

In total, the building was moved 350 feet, just a block away, but that's not the craziest part. Residents were still allowed, no, invited, to spend the nights in the apartment. They would have to leave while the moving was being done, but every night they could come home, sleep, and do it all over again the next morning. Utilities were still hooked up during the whole ordeal.