In a 12-hour-long overnight operation, Replica House this fall was safely relocated to a new site off campus. Lengthy as it was, the transport was brief compared to the two-year planning and permitting process that preceded it. “There were no hiccups or hitches at all,” says Bob Robinson, director of the Office of Facilities and Campus Services, of the move.
The house was built in the 1930s as a two-thirds-scale replica of the downtown Pomona cottage where the College held its first classes in 1887. Originally intended to hold Pomona memorabilia, the replica for a time housed the KSPC radio station and was relocated in the ’60s to land farther into the interior of campus, next to Brackett Observatory.
That land is now the construction site for the new Studio Art Center, and so the cottage in November was moved to private land near the Claremont Hills Wilderness Park. Though under private ownership, the house is easily visible from the park entrance, and Robinson says there will be a plaque to commemorate the building’s heritage.