An Erie home on the National Register of Historic Places since 1984 is now sitting at a new address, thanks to the preservation efforts of Erie businessman Tom Hagen.

After weeks of preparation work, crews carefully relocated the Olds, Sweet, Norman house from West 7th Street across the block to West 6th Street.

Using dozens of truck wheels underneath the home, traversing a bed of steel plates, workers first started inching the home backward. The movement so slow, it was almost undetectable to the eyes of observers.

Then in the middle of the excavated lot crews jacked up the home by each set of truck wheels precisely positioning them at the proper angle to begin rotating the home 180 degrees, facing it's new location on West 6th Street.

The project, led by Kidder Jefferys Construction and Wolfe House & Building Movers drew a crowd.

The home built in 1884 for the Olds family, later occupied by the Sweets, was most recently owned by Ron Norman, who also had his photography studio there for more than 50 years.  Norman, thankful that Hagen purchased and is preserving the home, was there to watch the move.

The unusual event -- moving a 180 ton home will make the Queen Anne style home more visible and opens up an opportunity for Gannon University to use the building as guest housing on the campus. 

Tom Hagen said, "It's so unusual to have a house jacked up and moved and particularly a house of this size...they do it in other places but it's unusual here in Erie." 

Gannon President Walter Iwanenko is also excited about the preservation of Erie's history and looking forward to using it as a guest house and a learning opportunity.  "We're going to create an opportunity where it'll be a student run --I'm not going to say an airbnb -- but an airbnb like stay, where people can reserve rooms and stay when they're visiting their students or when we have guests on to campus. We'll be working with the business department and they'll be learning how to run a business."

At its new location, crews still need to build a new foundation underneath the home, replace a porch, and complete the restoration work on the house itself, including new windows and some window sills.