Largest earth-moving project in North America at the time and the techniques developed and engineers trained on it would later be used to dig the Panama canal.
How do you jack a building up? For example how do you get that initial amount of space to put a jack underneath it? Do you excavate and somehow avoid a cave in or the building shifting?
I was thinking about this as well. I assume you leave the foundation in place and jack up the structure. So you would remove sections of the structure to place a jack of some kind and then once enough jacks were in place crank them all at once.
Exactly, any sane structure is built with some redundancy so you should be able to temporarily remove a column or piece of wall to install the jacking equipment and then do the job.
They cut holes in the cement foundation and slide beams across the entire house, then lift it up. Back trailer under house, through another large hole cut in the foundation, lower house onto trailer and drive away. When I was a kid, I watched an entire neighborhood get moved when a Walmart got built across from my grandparents. Moving the houses was some kind of give back, after citizens sued for years trying to prevent it.
House movers can do cool tricks like building a raft out of beams, under a house and without moving the house. then the raft is lifted and the house never subjected to too much stress.
[1] https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/usa/illinois/articl...