The oldest structure on the National Mall made some moves on Thursday as part of the ongoing Constitution Gardens revitalization project.

The Historic Lockkeeper’s House was built in the 1830s as the residence for the person who collected tolls and kept records at the lock connecting the Washington branch of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal to the Washington City Canal.

The Lockkeeper, a C&O canal employee, lived at the house from 1835 to 1855, and he or one of his 13 children was expected to man the station 24/7, according to Atlas Obscura.

That canal extension ran parallel to the modern Mall, before railroads became the favored mode for moving goods and the canal company went out of business in 1855. The canal itself remained until it was filled in at the orders of Alexander “Boss” Shepard in1871, creating what we now know as Constitution Ave.

A more modest presence on the Mall than the marble memorials and monuments, the house has served as a jail cell for Park Police and a public restroom, though it’s sat vacant for the past 40 years and fallen into disrepair.

Now, though, the plan is for the Lockkeeper’s House to serve as a welcoming center and visitor information plaza with educational exhibits about the history of the National Mall. To do that, though, it had to be lifted from its spot at the corner of 17th Street and Constitution Avenue NW, right next to traffic.

Workers used a hydraulic system for the 50-foot move. The new location will allow the public to enter from both sides of the building. According to The Washington Post, the whole endeavor took about a half hour, with intermittent starts and stops.

Work on the house began well before the move, with a groundbreaking in December 2016. Since then, there’ve been repairs to the stone, and, in preparation for the move, stone chimneys were removed and catalogued to lighten the house’s load.

This relocation isn’t the first for the structure, which has been moved twice before, though the this marks the first private construction project on the National Mall, according to EarthCam, which created the time-lapse video. The $11 million project is a partnership between National Park Service and the Trust for the National Mall, and the trust says it’s still looking for an additional $3.63 million in private funding.

Once the restoration of the Lockkeeper’s House is complete, Phase II of the project involves rehabilitating the Constitution Gardens.

Previously:
Historic Lockkeepers House To Make Moves On The Mall
Photos: Lockkeeper’s House On the National Mall To Be Restored