Crews move the Kansas City Young Matrons clubhouse

The tires on the flatbed started to roll. Well, truth be told, they inched forward a tiny, tiny bit.

But it was just enough to get the members of the crowd who came to see the move really jazzed. They cheered as if their team just scored a goal in a tight game. Some took photos. Others recorded video of friends standing in front of the moving house.

Yes, a moving house — the Kansas City Young Matrons clubhouse.

“Oh my gosh, look at that!” Betsy Vossman said Saturday as she caught her first glimpse of the historic colonial-style house, on the flatbed, in the middle of Oak Street. “That’s our home.”

Added Jane Willhoite, who stood next to Vossman: “It’s where we’ve made so many friends.”

Vossman and Willhoite are past presidents of the Kansas City Young Matrons, so this move was a major event for them and other members. For several hours, dozens of people lined Oak Street between 51st and 52nd streets to see crews move the clubhouse.

They were taking the 2,600-square-foot building from 51st and Oak streets to 52nd and Cherry streets, the new location on the University of Missouri-Kansas City campus.

Just a few blocks. But a long haul.

The move makes way for a new development project, which will feature a Whole Foods Market, the UMKC Student Health and Counseling Center, five stories of luxury apartments and a parking garage.

“It’s a win-win for us,” said Barbara Eiszner, president of the matrons organization. “They needed the property and we’ll be on the hill. And we get to keep our historic clubhouse.”

The project developers, VanTrust Real Estate, are paying for the clubhouse move. Plus, they’re covering the bills for a clubhouse overhaul, which includes new plumbing, new wiring, a new roof and an annex that will add 2,200 square feet.

A new kitchen in the annex will replace the one previously in the clubhouse basement, and the new dining room will meet disability access codes.

Over the next week, the clubhouse will be lifted and set on its new foundation.

“This is going to set the group up to be serving for a lot of years to come,” said Susie Womack, the Young Matrons’ public relations director. “We’ll be more poised for however long the building lasts from here on out.”

The women’s volunteer organization, which serves needs throughout Kansas City, started in 1917. The clubhouse opened in the fall of 1936.

Back then, members met there every Monday. They’d come in on the trolley, hams sometimes leveled on their laps.

Once at the clubhouse, they’d spend the day. Eating. Hearing lectures. Playing bridge. It was their time to be together.

Even now, the one-story colonial house is where members meet and host programs.

On Saturday morning, with the house stopped in the middle of Oak Street, Caroline Knecht prepared son Henry for what would soon be coming. The pair go down Oak every day on the way to his day care, just to see all the construction trucks. So when Knecht heard about the clubhouse move, mother and son came to watch.

“They’re going to drive by with a house,” she told 2-year-old Henry, who had a fire truck in one hand and who could rattle off the name of every truck he saw that was here for the big event. A bucket truck. An excavator. A forklift.

As for the actual moving of the house, Henry preferred the equipment it took to get the job done. And that probably was a good thing. Because those trucks and other contraptions move a lot faster than a house.

After two hours, crews were still a long way from their destination. A few Young Matrons members, wearing their dark blue moving shirts with the saying “There’s no place like home” on the back, headed for lunch.

“By the time we’re done, we’ll still be able to see it,” said member Pam Morris. “I think it’ll be a while.”

Enid Dickson reassured her fellow Matrons that slowly, but surely, their clubhouse would get to its new home.

“It’s moving,” Dickson said. “The tires are really moving.”

This story was originally published September 12, 2015 at 1:25 PM with the headline "Crews move the Kansas City Young Matrons clubhouse."