Mobile triple deckers never really worked out

When houses are transported like this (and it does occasionally happen up to the present day) they tend to go very slowly, for a variety of obvious reasons, so it's going to be causing traffic more than anyone would worry about avoiding it.

And of course, you really don't want to get Storrowed when you're driving a multi-story house.

It was a decade ago, maybe longer, that Harvard decided to move a stately building to what is now 1637 Mass Ave. Here's the streetview. (Between Harvard and Porter Sq.)

First they had to cut that green dorm in half which was fairly impressive itself. I kept wondering why they carefully knocked half of it down and stopped.

Next they advertised that Mass Ave and the bus lines would be shut for the weekend. The MBTA made them bring a structural engineering firm to verify that the truck moving the house wouldn't collapse the Red Line tunnel that runs below Mass Ave. Then the T had to remove the power lines for the electric busses.

The actual move was pretty cool. A whole bunch of locals came out to watch. Kind of a very slow parade of sorts.

Why couldn't all the houses have remained? And why can't there be an opening in the fence to allow access to Wood Island Station? Of course this bulldozed shell of a street still requires an East Boston parking permit, even though the nearest residence is a quarter mile walk away.

Why? Because MassPort bought all the houses in that area for the Logan Airport expansion that happened in the 60s. Then because of airport noise, most homes within X feet of the airport property were purchased and bulldozed (or moved). Thats why those "Airport Buffer" green zones were made (or something like that).

Google "Neptune Road Logan Airport Boston" and you'll find lots of links about the old neighborhood that was there (it was much larger than the current street grid shows)

In short.. Why? MassPort.

As far as Wood Island. I agree, but Wood Island was rebuilt in the mid-90s (when the upper bus loop was removed). Wood Island has some of the lowest boardings on the blue line (next to Suffolk Downs) so it boils down to $$$$$ . Spend 400k engineering / construction of a walkway to an empty street that connects to basically an offramp from 1A and a service road. Hard pressed to find funds at all to do this. Maybe when Wood Island gets rebuilt in 2070 or some future year way down the road.

It's a dead-end that now has no residences or businesses fronting on it. It would make more sense to tear it up and add it to the adjoining buffer park.

… a small house was floated on barrels from one side of Peddocks Island to another.

Seems to have been a thing in the early 20th century.

My parents bought a house in an older section of a city. They found out that it had originally been built about 20 years before the supposed construction date (1885 instead of 1905) and then moved up a hill across two building lots within a city block to the next street when a much older house burned down (around 1900). Then a block of four 1 bedroom apartments was built on the lot where the house originally stood, sometime around 1910.

The new location had a narrow frontage, while the old lot was shallower and much wider. The space between the lots remained with the house.

Swirls, you're pretty much correct

Triple Decker = Cheap Housing for the working class

Mobile Homes = Cheap housing for the working class

The only difference is the decade.

Hell even the layout is similar. Front to back rectangle, with Living/Dining/Kitchen in the front a long hallway down one side and bedrooms in the back. Most single wide mobile homes follow this same layout format.

They regraded the area around the buildings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regrading_in_Seattle

This may be a good model for the seaport in the coming years.