Wagon Shop Rides Again To New Museum Proud Steilacoom Showpiece, Near Collapse, Carefully Moved

With all the right moves, a house built 140 years ago as a wagon shop will be turned into a centerpiece of a new museum.

On Tuesday, the house was pulled from the ground, hoisted onto a dolly and moved slowly over the lawn.

Taut cables tugged 50 tons inch-by-inch across plywood planks laid to steady the soggy earth.

Righting the crooked house, however, will take much more than shifting it.

In May 1996, heavy rains weakened the already minimal support system, and the house slid six feet to the northwest and lurched noticeably. The porch caved in. A pear tree poked through the roof and is credited with preventing the whole house from collapsing.

Nathaniel Orr, a native Virginian, built the house as a wagon shop five years after he arrived in 1852. He planted some of the existing fruit trees and became not only the local wagon repairman but a furniture craftsman. Not until he married in 1868 did he convert the shop into a house.

The Steilacoom Historical Museum Association, which bought the house from Orr’s son in 1974, is raising money to restore it. It wants to turn the whole property - which includes a shed and a wagon shop - into a museum.

The house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is considered a showpiece of old-town Steilacoom.

“It’s a fragile structure. That’s why we’re trying so hard to save it,” said Town Councilman Dave Welch, who also manages the project for the museum association.

The contractor, John Korsmo Construction, will install a new roof this winter and, once more money is available, excavate and pour a new foundation, complete with a basement. That’s one reason the house slid in the first place: It was built atop the ground with nothing to secure it.

The house will remain in its new spot - about 30 feet west of the original site - until the new foundation is finished. The actual restoration of the house will begin later.

“All we’re doing now is getting it structurally sound,” he said. “It could take five years to get it historically accurate.”

The entire project - from relocation to restoration of all three buildings on site - will cost an estimated $1.2 million. The Orr Home move and foundation work comes to $200,000, of which the museum association has raised $70,000 so far.