Экзаменационный (типовой) материал ЕГЭ / Английский / 10 задание / 06

A. When British people decide to change their place of residence, they sometimes use the expression ‘to move house’ and say something like “I’m moving house next week”. This idiom often baffles foreigners who realize that no houses referred to are going to change their location. It is a person who is moving, not the house! But then again, when it comes to idioms, logic rarely works. It’s only in real life that houses don’t move. Or… do they?
 

B. There have been several cases in history when houses were indeed moved to different locations. Perhaps the very first one to be moved was the 25-metertall bell tower of the church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Bologna which was protruding in the middle of the street making it difficult for pedestrians to walk around it. In 1455, a young engineer Aristotle Fioravanti succeeded in moving the tower 13 meters and earned 50 gold ducats for that!
 

C. Moscow is one of the few cities in the world that can boast of a great number of moved buildings – all in all, about 70! The very first relocation took place in 1897 during the expansion of the Nikolayevskaya Railway. In the way of the new railway stood a 2-storeyed house belonging to Jane McGill, a well-known British woman and an honoured citizen of Moscow. She agreed for the house to be moved 100 meters to the west and even paid for it herself.
 

D. In 1935, when a new Plan for the Reconstruction of Moscow was adopted, it became clear that in order to make old streets wider and to build new ones, many old buildings had to be destroyed. This is what happened to many buildings in Gorky Street – now Tverskaya. But not to all of them. The old Moscow Governor’s Palace – the Mossoviet building, now the Mayor’s office – survived, as did several others, because they were moved to make room!
 

E. “A House Has Moved!” is a famous children’s poem by the famous Soviet children’s writer Agnia Bartho. It features not only the fact of a building being moved, but also that it was being moved while everyone who lived in it… kept living in it. Soviet engineers took pride in their precise technology of moving buildings so smoothly that people who lived in them wouldn’t even notice it. It was usually done at night and the exact date was always unknown!
 

F. To achieve such a miracle, buildings had to be cut from their foundations, put on special rollers and placed on a bed of rails similar to those used on railroads. Engineers used flexible pipes and cables to ensure that the water system, sewerage, electricity, radio and telephone lines continued to work during the move. When an eye hospital was being moved in such a fashion, the doctors continued performing operations on their patients!
 

G. In 1983, part of the famous ‘MHAT’ – Moscow Academic Art Theatre – building was moved to make the stage bigger. Since then, no buildings in Moscow had been moved until July 2020, when a 19th century water tower was moved 130 meters not far from Savelovsky railway station to make room for a new residential building. It’s great that the old technology has not been forgotten and is still used to save historic buildings from destruction.