OSU Building has New Home - Off-Campus

Endex Engineering plans to renovate the century-old structure

By KATY MOELLER Gazette-Times reporter
JEREMY F. HARRISON Gazette-Times Photographer

If everything hadn't come together perfectly, Oregon State University's old Horticulture Building probably would have ended up in the scrap heap. But after spending more than 100 years on the campus - in three different locations - the building wasn't demolished.

On Sunday, it was gently loaded onto a trailer and slowly pulled by a truck to its final resting place next to the Willamette Valley and Coast Railroad Depot at Seventh Street and Washington Avenue. The building will be restored and preserved by OSU alum Gary Feuerstein, owner of Endex Engineering. "History is really important," said Feuerstein, who spend all morning handing out T-shirts, pens and informational fliers to camera-toting spectators along the ballon-lined Washington Avenue route. "What we do with buildings outlives all of us. You can make history for generations to come by making some pretty routine decisions."

Built in the summer of 1892, the Horticulture Building was originally north of Benton Hall and west of Apperson Hall. Historical documents show the cost of constructing the building was $700. Endex paid OSU $1 for the building, which in 1913 became the first home of the department of poultry husbandry. But the cost of moving the two-story, 2,000-square-foot building was $30,000. And the renovation will require an investment of $100,000 to $300,000.

David Livingston, business manager for Endex, said many things came together to make the project possible. This just happened to be a real serendipitous connection," he said. "The building was available, the route was short, Endex is interested in older buildings, and we have a piece of property not too far away. If any one of those things had been missing, it wouldn't have worked." The building's most recent use was as a feed-mixing facility for the poultry department. Feuerstein, who said it will take about two years of planning and working with potential tenants before renovation will actually begin, doesn't yet know who will occupy the building or how the space will be utilized. He said that may depend on whether the property's zoning is changed from general industrial to mixed-use.

Endex, founded in 1980, has done several major restoration projects in Corvallis, including the 86-year-old train depot that now houses Michael's Landing restaurant. Moving the train depot from Sixth Street to its current river-front location was a lot more complicated than moving the Horticulture Building, Feuerstein said. "It missed buildings by 3 feet both sides on the turns," he said, noting that the depot was about 60 feet Longer than the Horticulture Building and twice as heavy.

There were only a few minor snags for the Horticulture Building on Sunday. The seven-hour move stalled for several minutes at the corner of Washington and 15th Street, where utility workers had to pull a leaning light pole back a few inches. And the transition to the grass was rather slow going as tracks were laid down to keep the trailer wheels from slipping or sinking. But onlookers didn't seem to mind the buildings slow progress across town.

Beth Russell, whose father, Joe Russell, was an employee in the poultry department of Oregon Agricultural College before 1915, took dozens of pictures of the historic move. "It's a nice old building," she said. The building her father worked in will sit next to the freight depot where she once worked as a telegraph operator. "I handed orders to the engineers of the trains that went by," said Russell, who retired in 1976.

But even those who have no connection at all to the old Horticulture Building were awed by the Sunday procession. "It's in real good condition," said longtime Corvallis resident Marian Ott. "I think it would be an awful good place for a museum."