The tree in question—a sweet gum—is a “good” tree, according to Jack Kelly, regional manager of Bartlett Tree Experts.

Kelly says he “fought hard” to keep it. So instead, his crews spent the morning tying back the branches of a silver maple on the opposite corner. The turn will have to be narrower but the sweet gum will survive.

Kelly, who started as a horticulturalist with Harvard’s grounds maintenance division two decades ago, started working on this project about two years ago, when several trees were cut down in preparation for this weekend’s move.

Kelly’s childhood home was two blocks away, and he says he believes the CGIS project will improve the area’s feel. As a boon to the neighborhood where it will construct CGIS’s two large academic buildings, the University plans to restore several wood-frame houses along Sumner Road that have fallen into disrepair.

Harvard will also install brick sidewalks and add 200 trees around the new academic buildings—trees that Kelly and his crews will plant.

“I have a lot of vested interest. I grew up here,” he says. “Life comes full circle.”

According to Charles M. Sullivan, director of the Cambridge Historical Commission, the restoration effort marks a “major shift” in Harvard’s attitude toward the old wood-frame houses that surround the Yard.

In contrast to some earlier eras, when Harvard looked at Victorian houses only as they fit into the University’s development plans, he says the current restoration project will help to “knit back the fabric of the neighborhood.”

By 10:25 a.m., the house has cleared the tough corner and only a couple branches of the sweet gum had to be cut off. Kirkland Street is immediately reopened to traffic, and back at the intersection of Cambridge and Quincy cranes are already lifting the stoplights back into place.

Getting this far took about an hour. The moving crew will spend the next three hours maneuvering the house into the lot on Sumner Road.

A crowd of about 30 people has been coming and going ever since the house started rolling around 9:30 a.m. On the corner of Cambridge and Quincy, Takafuni Katayama watches the house roll towards him and his wife Noriko, who pushes their daughter Kaya in a stroller.

Noriko Katayama walks this route every day, and as several large buildings were demolished recently to make way for CGIS, she began to wonder what was going to happen to the one house that was left.

Now, her husband says, they have their answer. And like most of the crowd, he’s incredulous.

“In my country, this never happens,” says the Massachusetts General Hospital employee, who came from Japan two years ago. “In my country, you destroy and then build up. This country hoists things. It’s unbelievable.”

They are only disappointed that they don’t have a camera with them.