Meanwhile, Tom Simister, a designer with the Casali Group, the firm managing the day-to-day construction details of CGIS, drifts around the site recording the sounds of the day with equipment borrowed from his girlfriend, who works for National Public Radio.
Simister interviews onlookers and construction workers. He even tried to question the gruff man who is busily in charge of directing the house into place over the foundation.
“Talking to him is a little like pulling teeth,” he says, smiling, “but it’s such a great group of personalities.”
Casali has its own official photographer for the project, who walks around with two cameras slung over his shoulder. And there’s another man in charge of videotaping. Eventually, Simister says, his audio recording will be combined with the video in a documentary.
Even if it’s not part of his work for CGIS, Simister says he still wants to make the documentary on his own just for fun.
Marjorie A. Lombardi also has her camera out to document the move, but her photographs are strictly business. The project manager for Northeast Building Movers snaps pictures of every job for promotional purposes.
She watches as a spool on the company’s 1957 tractor cab winds up metal cables pulling the house into place. Since the lot is too small for a truck to drive the house in, crew members work under the house to point the wheels in the right direction.
At 1:44 p.m., Lombardi pronounces: “And it is in place.”
About ten minutes later, Eddy N. Couturier climbs down from a truck he was manuevering out of the way. He spent most of the day on the street overseeing his six-man crew in a white hardhat.
“I direct from out front,” he explains. “You can’t see nothing from in here.”
Over the last 25 years, Couturier reckons, he has moved between 1,000 and 1,500 structures.
He first saw the spectacle of a house on wheels as a young construction worker, when he once worked on a project where a building mover was brought in. In 1983 he founded Northeast Building Movers, which now averages more than 50 jobs per year.
Saturday’s move was hardly his company’s largest project. Two years ago, Northeast crews relocated a brick firehouse in Kendall Square that was three times the size and weighed about 400 tons.
But the Prescott Street house was above average in size, and the turn onto Sumner Road was a “tight” one. As far as he’s concerned, the day went well.
“I wouldn’t say routine,” he chuckles, “but this is what we do routinely.”
—Staff writer Andrew S. Holbrook can be reached at holbr@fas.harvard.edu.