The June 16 move (Friends of the Ladd Carriage House)

Hundreds of Portland, Ore., residents watched on June 16 as workers moved a National Register-listed carriage house two blocks. Rather than being demolished for a new condo tower, the 1883 Ladd Carriage House will be moved back to its downtown site next year, thanks to a compromise between city leaders, a grassroots group, and its owner.

The First Christian Church, which has owned the site since 1970, obtained a demolition permit for the carriage house but later amended its plans. It will now move into in the ground floor of the new 23-story tower.

As the 534,000-pound building creaked during the 15-hour move, workers demolished the nearby Rosefriend Apartments, a brick building constructed in 1910.

"The moves that it took to get there were much bigger and were the moves that saved the building," says Paul Falsetto, a member of Friends of the Ladd Carriage House and architect at Carleton Hart Architecture, which will oversee the house's rehabilitation. "We had some pretty interesting responses from the developer of the project. They made a fantastic turnaround in strategy, and that turnaround really saved the building."

Two years ago, when residents heard about the church's plans to hire a developer to build on the site, they formed a grassroots group. Backed by two city mayors, Friends of the Ladd Carriage House proposed several alternatives to demolition. Minneapolis-based Opus Northwest, LLC, which is constructing the 23-story Ladd Tower, plans to move the Ladd Carriage House back to its original site in 16 months. That's when its restoration, which Falsetto says will take from eight to 12 months, will begin.

In 1883, William Sargent Ladd (1826-1893), a New Hampshire schoolteacher who helped transform Portland from a trading outpost into a city, hired Joseph Sherwin to design the Stick Style carriage house.

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