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Historic South Loop House Moving To Make Way For McCormick Redevelopment

CHICAGO (CBS) -- House movers made quick work of hauling a historic coach house down the street Wednesday morning in a neighborhood where Chicago's movers and shakers lived 100 years ago.

WBBM Newsradio's Mike Krauser reports it took about 90 minutes to move the Harriet F. Rees House's two-story brick coach house about half a block from its original location at 2110 S. Prairie Av.

"I've never seen a house move like this before," said William Tyre, curator of the Glessner House Museum, another historic home a few blocks away on Prairie Avenue.

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The Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority is moving the Rees House to make way for the new DePaul University basketball arena and a new entertainment district planned near McCormick Place.

The Reese House dates back to the late 19th century, and is a designated Chicago landmark, so city officials wanted to save it, since the land where it sits is in the middle of land targeted for the new development near McCormick Place.

"We think it may actually predate the Chicago Fire," Tyre said. "The house itself was completed in 1889. It was a design of Cobb and Frost."

Peter Kuhn, project manager at Bulley & Andrews, LLC, which is helping coordinate the move, said "a lot of engineering" went into planning the process to move the brick coach house, and the three-story main house.

Rees House main house
The 19th century Harriet F. Rees House on Prairie Avenue will be moved a block north to make way for redevelopment plans around McCormick Place. (Credit: Mike Krauser/WBBM)

Nicole Murphy was among the spectators who watched crews guide the coach house down Prairie Street on automated dollies.

"They've done such a great job," she said.

Once the move is complete, the Rees House will be located at 2017 S. Prairie Av., across the street, and about a block north of the site where it was built.

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