In the shadow of the stripped-down house still strapped to wheels, Bruce Gould shook Ted Deckard’s hand.
“Congratulations,” he said, as Bruce’s wife, Pam, snapped their photo. “It’s all yours.”
Deckard offered to let them stay there that night, gesturing to the walls standing open on two sides. “It’s got air conditioning.”
The Goulds politely declined. Instead, Bruce went back to work, picking through the foundation stones on his land where the 100-plus-year-old Dennis Calvin house used to stand.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]Over the course of an afternoon, the two-story house was dragged, pushed and pulled through to the neighboring yard, where it will sit for the next several weeks until it gets a permanent foundation.
The Goulds bought the property at 167 E. Main St. in the spring, and their plans for it didn’t include keeping the house. A couple days before it was set to be demolished, anonymous donations from Peaceful Valley preservation group members came in totaling about $34,000.
Deckard and Tonya Figg, who own the neighboring property at 173 E. Main St., volunteered to take the house and set it next to their historic tourist rental, Barnyard Treasures. Their vision is to make it a separate rental unit on the same property.
Last month, additions that were built onto the Dennis Calvin house over the past few decades were removed, exposing the original log joists, the front and the back of the house to the elements.
Then, for about a week, four men from MCF House Movers in Petersburg worked to clear most of the dirt out from under the house so that its foundation could be strengthened.
Alex Deffendoll, son of 40-year company owner Mike Deffendoll, said he’s worked on structures in worse shape in his 10-plus years with the company, but because this one was covered up so much with the additions, they didn’t know what condition it was really in until they pulled in with their equipment. It was little rougher than expected, but he was confident they’d get it stabilized and moved safely to the lot next door.
In the blazing sun on July 11, a small crowd gathered on the sidewalk to watch that happen.
To make a secure base, MCF workers had punched holes in the masonry foundation and used a large metal sled on the front of a skid steer to dig the dirt and clay out. Two steel beams were placed lengthwise, and several more crossed those to help hold the structure together from beneath.
The whole house, which was built mostly on unstripped logs, was then slowly lifted with jacks, and lumber was stacked under the corners in a Lincoln Log-like pattern. That lumber was then replaced with large sets of wheels controlled by hydraulic lifts. The wheels were bolted to the steel frame, then the whole top-heavy load was chained to a RAM pickup and the skid steer. (The vehicle the company normally uses for these jobs happened to break down that day.)
Inch by slow inch, the house rolled, on a path of scrap lumber the workers laid for it.
Inside the living room, the wagon-wheel chandelier swayed. Bystanders snapped pictures, and the tourists on the Nashville Express craned their necks as they passed.
After more than a dozen starts and stops, and with the pickup, a semi, the skid steer and people pushing and pulling, the house rolled up a grassy hill and next door to its new neighbor.
There it will rest until a basement is dug and foundation built behind Barn Treasures. Then, MCF House Movers will return to place it on its new base.
The cost of the move was about $17,500, Deckard said.
Most of the PVH donation money will be going toward the restoration effort, said PVH member Jim Schultz, who helped broker the deal. The donations include a covenant that the exterior be restored to the appropriate look for the period of the house. PVH also is dipping into its heritage preservation fund, though donor Ruth Reichmann, to offer a $10,000, low-interest, three-year loan to the new owners, Schultz said.
About $2,500 of the donation money went to compensate the Goulds for the extra time it was taking to move the house instead of knock it down, Schultz said.
Deckard estimated it might take until August before they can start digging the foundation, but they’d like to at least get it enclosed by winter. He shuffled through a stack of plans showing what they hope to do to it: Build an addition off the back, put new bedrooms in the basement and rebuild the front entrance close to the way it probably used to look.
Problem is, nobody’s been able to find any photos of what the front and inside of the house actually looked like, he said. If anyone does have any, he’s interested in seeing them.
All of these plans are dependent on what the Nashville Development Review Commission tells him he can do, he said. They’re also somewhat dependent on the cost; the new owners are paying for any work the PVH money doesn’t cover, unless anyone else wants to donate, Deckard said with a smile.
[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”Who was Dennis Calvin?” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
John “Dennis” Calvin was elected Brown County sheriff twice before World War I.
His grandfather, Timothy Downing Calvin, was among the early settlers of Nashville, coming from southern Ohio in 1854. T.D. Calvin was appointed postmaster in 1885.
One of T.D. Calvin’s sons, T.D. Calvin Jr., owned a dry goods store in Nashville.
The middle son, John B. Calvin, built a popular hardware and furniture store on East Main Street opposite the Brown County courthouse. When he died at age 40, the business passed to his sons, 14-year-old John “Dennis” Calvin and 12-year-old William “Duard” Calvin.
Duard’s house stood where Peter Grant’s gallery is now, and Dennis’ was the blue house on East Main. Both brothers continued to run their hardware business until their deaths in 1938 and 1944.
