When they were getting ready to build Manley High School in 1935 they sold the buildings that were in the blocks where the school was going. These were three-story graystones. They sold them to people who would move them.
So the buildings were put on rollers and rolled down the street. Big rollers. They just moved them–put rollers in front, pushed the house, more rollers. Haven’t you ever seen that done?
There were many vacant lots around, prairies where we played. So a few of these buildings went in right across the street from us.
You’d wake in the morning and see a house standing in front of your house. Well, it might take them a day to roll it down the street. I mean, it was remarkable that they could do that.
It was mostly Italian people who bought the buildings, and so the neighborhood started to change very suddenly from being mostly Irish to more Italians than Irish. So, as always, when the Italians started moving in the Irish started moving out.
We had about four houses that were Irish to the end, four cottages. We called it Kerry Patch.