They might be giants

CAMBRIDGE -- Guy Davis is a house mover from a long line of house movers.

He began learning the business at age 5, and he helped out by operating bulldozers and driving pickup trucks long before he had a driver's license. His father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather were all in the business.

As three massive 19th-century houses crawled two blocks down Massachusetts Avenue yesterday morning near the Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Davis, 43, was the man in charge of steering them to their new location.

About once a month, he says, someone tells him how crazy he is.

"Houses are not really meant to move, especially houses this size," Davis, of Westhampton Beach, N.Y., said while preparing the site Friday, "so you're doing something that people try to wrap their brain around."

Wearing dirty jeans and work boots, he weaved yesterday between the tires on the dollies under the largest house. He sprinted from one side to another, eyeing the top of the building to make sure it would clear nearby trees.

At one point, the 57-foot-tall giant structure was stopped so a worker in a cherrypicker could slice off several small tree limbs. Neighbors Dave and Janet Harkness, who had been watching from their lawn, took cover on their porch.

"It's all right," said Dave Harkness, 62, trying to calm other neighbors who worried that the house would slide off its dollies. "A couple of little branches won't hurt."

A few hundred people lined the unusually quiet street throughout the morning to witness the operation, many carrying cameras and coffee cups. Some had not heard anything about the move and tossed hundreds of questions at workers.

Harvard spent $1 million to relocate the houses to another campus location. The university will eventually remodel them into dormitories for 27 students. A 250,000-square-foot academic complex will be built on the site that was vacated.

At 5 a.m., contractors dragged the first and largest building, the 200-ton Ukrainian House, into the street, where it took up every lane. Davis and his crew moved the third structure onto its new site about four hours later.

People often tell Davis that it can't be done, that it can't be moved. But he can move any building, no matter how tall, how historic, or how many obstacles have to be dodged, he said. His Long Island, N.Y.-based company, Davis Construction House & Building Movers, shifts 80 to 100 buildings a year down narrow, meandering streets, up and down hills, in all kinds of weather.

"You're at a bigger advantage if you're born into it," he said. "You'll be doing something, and then you'll just remember: 'Oh, I remember my dad did this 20 years ago, and you just do a little movement there. Then some of your men look at you like, 'Where'd you get that from?' "

Not everyone enjoyed yesterday's show.

"I'm glad it will be over, so I can study more easily," said David Nancekivell, 50, who is finishing a dissertation in classical Arabic grammar.

Gordon Moore, 70, who worked on a committee set up by Harvard to ease the impact of the moving project, said neighbors aren't happy about the large building going up in place of the Victorian houses.

But they were pleased that the university saved the structures, he said.

"I came, I saw, I enjoyed," said 12-year-old Ben Tapper of Belmont. "I also like the technology. They're using hydraulics to keep it level. I like the I-beams. I-beams are always cool."

The move wasn't Davis's largest, but there were plenty of challenges. Overhead power lines for buses, traffic signals, and street lamps had to be removed.

Officials had planned to keep the avenue closed until early tomorrow, but said it could reopen sooner because MBTA and city crews began reinstalling lines immediately.

Davis had to use fewer of the heavy dollies that normally transport such buildings, because they would be rolling above two subway tunnels. But he had to put twice as many wheels on the dollies he did use , making them more difficult to steer.

He thrives on a mission like that, he said.

"You take the challenge," Davis said. "But when you're thinking about what you're actually doing and you pull the building in the road, you say to yourself, 'What am I doing?' "

Davis has not lost a building yet, but there have been close calls, especially during poor weather.

He once moved a house on the seacoast, with waves crashing around it. When the tide receded, his crew went in and successfully dragged the house away from the ocean, saving it from a brutal northeaster that could have swallowed it.

"You can't beat that Mother Nature," he said. "I have a couple of times, but she'll get even with me. I know that."

Most of Davis's work is improvised. There are no set rules, because structures were built with various materials and each reacts differently to being uprooted.

It's a total win or a total lose; there is no in-between, he said. "If I lose it, I'm done."

Now he's teaching his two daughters -- Violet, 9, and Rose, 10 -- the family trade. He sometimes hands them the remote, walks away, and lets them drive the buildings being moved. Harvard said no this time.

"I was born into this profession, but, you know, I like to move things low key and with nobody around, so I could kind of do without all the attention," Davis said "But it's fun. After the job is done and it's successful and you're proud of it, then you know it's been marked for history."