Why is a historic home near Roosevelt Row being relocated 12 feet?

If you’ve driven along Third Ave in downtown Phoenix recently, or perhaps took a stroll after checking out Proof Bread’s new location, you may have noticed a boarded-up red brick home elevated on steel beams and what look to be wooden crates.

Surrounded by modern apartment buildings and well-kept law offices, the home sticks out like a sore thumb. So, what’s up with the building? And, literally, why is it up, sitting several feet off the ground?

Phoenix New Times has the answers.

The home is known as the Seargeant-Oldaker home. Built in 1909, the house was once home to Elizabeth Oldaker, a prominent historian in the city. The brick Craftsman bungalow is listed in the National Register of Historic Places in Phoenix and has been a staple of the Roosevelt Row district for decades.

However, the home was slated for demolition before being saved from the scrap pile in 2024 by LiveForward Development, a Phoenix-based developer that received a city grant to help preserve it. The house is on stilts, essentially, because LiveForward is moving it 12 feet from where it has sat for 116 years to make room for a new apartment complex on the property.

LiveForward Development bought the property in June 2023 and plans to build roughly 100 workforce housing units, which are intended to complement the home’s “historic aesthetic.” The 12-foot shift will create enough space for the company to add the complex to the lot, while still reusing the historic home.

The building’s previous owner sought to tear down the home, leading Phoenix’s Historic Preservation Office to get involved. In February 2024, the Phoenix City Council voted to approve a $400,000 grant for the development company to relocate the home and adapt it into a commercial or restaurant space. The project also got a $324,000 grant from the state.

Three weeks ago, the process of moving the home began. With the help of craftsmen with expertise in lifting historic homes, the house was lifted onto the high beams, lifted again with hydraulics and and then put on wheels.

Scott Kilkenny, a founding member of LiveForward, said the moving process took two weeks to ensure that the structure was stabilized. “There was a real concern that they might crumble,” he said.

Last Wednesday, the house was moved to where it currently sits, on the southeast corner of the lot. However, the home is not yet in its final resting place. The developers are now working to create a new foundation and bring in the utilities to the northwest corner of the lot. When that’s done, which is expected sometime in September, the home will be placed on the corner of Third Avenue and McKinley Street.

Then, the next stage of the project will begin.

Developers plan to restore the structure’s exterior to how it was “originally built,” Kilkenny said, but they’ll transform and modernize the interior into a “food and beverage concept” spot or “some sort of community center. A garden patio may hang off the backside of the building. “It’ll be a really cool hangout spot,” Kilkenny said.

Some parts of the house will have to be replaced. The house was abandoned for a long time, Kilkenny said, and birds, rodents and people “doing some criminal activity in the home” meant a lot of cleanup was required.

The wood shingle roof will have to be replaced completely. LiveForward is going for the “same appearance and facade feel,” but due to modern building codes and fire safety concerns, the wood roof will have to go, Kilkenny said. But the arched windows, columns and brick facade will look as it did originally.

While the ultimate purpose of the space is to be determined, whatever the home ends up becoming will join an increasing number of restaurants, coffee shops and businesses in the area. The Historic Gold Spot, with favorites like Lola Coffee and First & Last, is just a block north. New and incoming spots, like Proof Bread and Matilda’s All Day Cafe, are just a quick walk away.