To expand his gardens, he bought an adjoining lot but was disturbed by the house that came with it and obstructed his view. Since he detested waste, he donated the house to a new girls’ school being built a block away. In what was hailed as an engineering wonder at the time, the brick house was jacked up by a windlass and rolled down the block on greased logs—a spectacle that was covered by local papers and drew spectators. “Mr. Rockefeller … set [the house] on new foundations where it was as good as ever,” Lucy Spelman said of her brother-in-law’s feat. “This was a marvelous undertaking, but
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