Picture this: a 143-year-old, 273-ton brick synagogue rolling down a D.C. street.

No, it wasn’t an act of God. The Adas Israel synagogue was moved a block down G Street Northwest on Wednesday morning, aided by an attentive construction crew and more than a dozen sets of wheels. A rabbi gave a traveler’s blessing in Hebrew nearby. Take a look.

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It’s the synagogue’s third — and hopefully final — move in its long and eclectic history. The modest brick building was constructed in 1876 as the District’s first synagogue. It took three months and $4,000 to build, and President Ulysses S. Grant presided over its dedication.

In 1908, the Adas Israel congregation decamped to the more spacious 6th and I Synagogue a few blocks away and put the building up for sale. (The congregation is now based in Cleveland Park.)

Over the next six decades, the building underwent as many career changes as a millennial with an English degree. Its tenants included an African American church, a Greek Orthodox church, a deli, a barbershop, a barbecue restaurant (oh, the irony), a bicycle store, and a coffee shop.

Then, in 1969, the building’s location (but not the building itself) was selected for the new Metro headquarters. The Washington Jewish community rallied to save the building from demolition, secured its landmark status and raised enough money to move it across G Street. It was reenvisioned as the Lillian & Albert Small Jewish Museum — a historic site and headquarters of the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington.

“It was hot, that’s what I remember [of the 1969 move],” said Carolyn Small Alper, the 91-year-old daughter of Lillian and Albert Small. She’s attended all three of the synagogue’s relocations. “Isn’t it fabulous?” she said as she watched Move #3.

The building moved for a second time to make way for the $1.4 billion Capitol Crossing development, a set of five mixed-use buildings that will rise from a platform above a stretch of I-395. Construction crews trucked it 60 feet down the road in 2016.

The final leg in its journey involved turning the building 90 degrees and backing it into a lot on G Street. Wednesday’s relocation allows the building to face east, in line with Jewish tradition.

Next, the synagogue will be encased by a new $34 million facility and reimagined as the Capital Jewish Museum, a museum dedicated to Jewish life in Washington. Exhibit artifacts will include a lace collar donated by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and a 1925 panoramic photograph of President Calvin Coolidge dedicating the Jewish Community Center of Washington. The museum architecture firm SmithGroup designed the new space.

“With so many scary examples of anti-Semitism over the past year, I think there’s never been a more important moment to make this kind of statement about Jewish life in our capital,” said Kara Blond, the Capital Jewish Museum’s executive director told WAMU.

D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton and D.C. Council Members Elissa Silverman (I-At Large) and Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) also came by to mark the occasion. “I just can’t get over it,” Holmes Norton laughed as she looked back at the building. “For god’s sake, the third move?”

“This has got to be the last move,” she said. “We insist.”

The Capital Jewish Museum is slated to open in 2021. Admission will be free.

This story was originally published on WAMU.