Historic Chestnut Street house on the move

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – An old house on Chestnut Street is getting a chance at a new life.

The house was built over a 100 years ago. And you can see it is in the transition of being moved. It’s about to find a new home.

The house will be moved next week half a mile down the road on Oaklawn.

Chuck Clark, president of the Landmark Association, lives across the street from the home, which he said is history.

“The person who built it was one of the first professors hired at what was then the Western Kentucky State Normal School, and his name was A.M. Stickle and he taught history and economics on the hill. And, he built this house in 1913 and his family had it until about four or five years ago.”

The College Heights Foundation then owned it. Clark says the home needed major repairs so much so that the building was likely to be demolished.

But the community worked together to find a solution to save the history rich building with one unnamed man taking responsibility for the project.

“He came up with a plan, approached the College Heights Foundation, which now owns the house, and they allowed him to move the house if he paid for the cost of moving it. And that’s what’s going on now. It’s been really neat to see how the workers have come in and gotten the house ready, how they’ve lifted it up off the ground and a week from now it’s gonna roll down the street to its new home,” Clark said.

Next Tuesday will be the day they move it, and it’ll be quite the sight to see.

“They’re going to turn the house on the property and bring it between the two trees that are still standing and it’ll come out on Chestnut Street, and it’s not gonna be pulled by a truck as I understand it, each of the hydraulic systems move with a joystick so people will be walking along beside it as it moves and they lower and raise to keep the house level as it comes down the little hill,” Clark said.

The home is part of Bowling Green’s character, he said.

“It’s part of the fabric that makes this city what it is. And it’s important to both the city and WKU I think because of who built it, the fact that it’s been here for well over a century.”