PROVO, Utah (AP) - The oldest house in Provo has been saved from demolition, dismantled and successfully moved to the city’s Pioneer Village, where it’s set to be rebuilt and open for tours by summer.
Crews moved the original timber frame of the 160-year-old house to a new foundation at the museum on Thursday, Pioneer Village director Steve Nelson said. Workers had painstakingly removed all the handmade adobe bricks from the structure and moved them over to the new site less than a mile away over the past few weeks.
“I’m not sure this will be the centerpiece of the village,” Nelson said, “but it will make a major contribution to its significance.”
The process of putting the delicate mud blocks back on the frame is expected to start next week.
The house was built in 1853 by Bishop James Loveless, but it was covered with stucco and modernized beyond recognition. It was scheduled to be demolished to make way for a church parking lot when historians realized its significance and jumped into action to save it.
Community members have raised $64,000 in donations so far to save it. Nelson said he’s hoping to raise at least $70,000 to cover the costs of transporting the house, adding historically accurate door frames and windows, and building its new foundation.
“We’ll find the money,” Nelson said. “It’s important enough to have this adobe house in the village, come hell or high water.”
While the Pioneer Village already has a home that dates back to 1853, it’s a log cabin. About 80 percent of the homes built in the mid-1800s in the Provo area were made of adobe because wood was hard to come by, Nelson said.
Loveless, who built the home, was born in Ohio in 1828, and his father was an early convert to the Mormon church. His family suffered two mob attacks in Missouri and Ohio before he crossed the plains and moved to Provo, according to the 1902 book “Portrait, Genealogical and Biographical Record of the State of Utah.”
He was a leader in the territorial militia, sat on the Provo City Council and served as bishop.
Loveless had three wives and raised 36 children before his death in 1888.
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