2. Newark International Airport Building 51 (7,400 tons)

Usually airports are a way to move people around. But in 2000 and 2001, an airport terminal in Newark became the object that was moved, and at a cost of $6 million, that's one expensive ticket [source: Collins].

center portion of Building 51 moving to new home
Photo courtesy Expert House Movers
The center portion of Building 51 moves to its new home.

Building 51 at Newark International Airport in New Jersey was one of the United States' first passenger terminals. Aviation luminaries such as Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh kept their planes at Newark, and it was the nation's busiest airport until LaGuardia opened four years later in 1939 [source: Collins]. However, as airports modernized and grew to accommodate more passengers, Building 51 became office space and eventually faced extinction so that a runway could be expanded.

The Port Authority and the New Jersey State Historic Preservation Office decided that the building was worth saving. It eventually took five months to move the whole building, which had to be cut into three separate pieces. The two side parts each weighed about 1,200 tons, while the central portion came in at 5,000 tons [source: Port Authority]. To move the main part three-quarters of a mile, 176 dollies moved at a speed of 100 feet an hour [source: Port Authority]. Now, Building 51 is the public entrance for the airport's administration offices.

Atlas Shrugged, Turned to Peter Friesen
If you had been in the audience for some of the biggest moves in the U.S., one face might seem familiar. Engineer Peter Friesen was part of the teams that moved the Fairmount Hotel in San Antonio, the Gem Theater in Detroit, the Shubert Theater in Minneapolis, the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in North Carolina and the Newark Airport Terminal 51 building in New Jersey, in addition to the thousands of other buildings he moved in his career. In the 1950s, Friesen developed the unified hydraulic jacking system that is used to evenly raise most buildings, and over his career, he earned four records in the book of Guinness World Records. A documentary about Friesen's life and career called "Pete: Moving Manmade Mountains" premiered in 2007. Friesen remains humble about his achievements, attributing his success at moving buildings to a simple motto: Think it through." [Source: Marck]

On the next page, we'll take a look at the current world record holder for the heaviest building moved.