Move across Lewisburg alley spares 97-year-old Sears kit home from demolition

Buyers of the popular home model, which retailed for less than $2,500, typically received the kits by railroad boxcar in shipments containing nearly 10,000 carefully labeled pieces, ranging from cabinet screws to cut and fitted floorboards.

While no railroad has passed through Lewisburg for many decades, the town was served from 1906 to 1931 by a spur line extending from Ronceverte, a stop on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad’s main line, according to Skip Deegans of the Lewisburg Historic Landmark Commission.

In 1924 or 1925, the Sears House was built by original owners H.C. and Blanche Jackson on Court Street, between the Greenbrier County Courthouse and the “Governor Price Home,” a stately brick home built 190 years ago for Lewisburg lawyer and one-time Virginia Lt. Gov. Samuel Price.

The Greenbrier County Commission in 1941 bought the kit house and the Odd Fellows Lodge that stood behind it to accommodate future expansion of the county government campus. The lodge building became the county jail, while the Sears house served as a rental property for the county, then an office for the WVU Extension Service, which occupied the structure until a few years ago.

“Despite its varied uses, the house is distinguished by the fact that the original floor plan has not been altered and nearly all of the original materials are intact,” Deegans said. It is part of the Lewisburg Historic District.

In recent years, the county commission has vacillated between demolishing, restoring or moving the Sears house, as preparations are made to build a $10 million, three-story courthouse annex on the house site. After pricing the cost of razing the home, county commissioners opted to make it available to anyone who would pay to have it moved off county property by the end of March.

Since the Lewisburg Historic Landmark Commission favors restoring and preserving the Sears house, the panel began reaching out to owners of undeveloped residential lots outside the annex building’s construction footprint. The goal was to make contact with someone willing to move the structure and, hopefully, restore and preserve it.

Among lot owners contacted was Margaret Preston Kulkarni, who grew up in Lewisburg but moved away to go to college, work in asset management for Exxon and NASA, marry her novelist and Rice University professor husband, now deceased, and raise four children.

When she learned about the proposal to move and own the Sears house, “I talked to the county commission and told them I was interested,” Kulkarni said. When she was told the move had to be completed by the end of March, she was a bit less excited but moved forward.

Kulkarni’s grandfather, a great-grandson of Samuel Price, lived in the Governor Price Home, also known as the Preston Home, for many years. “My grandfather grew up in that house, and my grandmother grew up in a house across the street,” she said.

Kulkarni’s lot, part of an inheritance from her Lewisburg ancestors, is located about 100 feet from the Sears kit house.

Finding a contractor to handle the short move proved to be a challenge. A general contractor who had agreed to move the house called at the end of February to say he was too busy to do the work. Other contractors wanted too much of the house temporarily taken apart and removed to make the move easier.

Meanwhile, Kulkarni and a brother still living in Lewisburg removed ductwork, a stairway and basement windows themselves to prepare the house for the move. They also had concrete footers built and found a Pennsylvania company specializing in moving buildings.

“Everything came together in the end,” Kulkarni said. “Watching the move was really cool.”

Wolfe House & Building Movers of Bernville, Pennsylvania, handled the job, using steel rollers attached to 40-foot steel I-beams. When the house inched its way to the end of one set of beams, the beams were moved to the front for another 40-foot traverse. A John Deere skid steer pulled the house along the rails.

“Start to end, the move took three days, most of it prep work,” said Deegans. The move was completed late Thursday.

“I’m planning to live in the house and doing what it takes to get it looking nice and original,” said Kulkarni. “It may take a while to fix everything that needs to be fixed, but this house is already almost 100 years old. I want to make it last another 100.”