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Published in The Seattle Times online on Dec. 4, 2025
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Dec. 7, 2025

Rollin’ on the river: 1975 Red Barn move launched flight museum

By Clay Eals

To soar, sometimes you’ve first gotta float.

The 22.5-acre Museum of Flight near Boeing Field south of Seattle is no secret. The world’s largest independent, nonprofit aerospace museum — home to 175 aircraft and spacecraft, thousands of artifacts, millions of photos and dozens of exhibits — is bedrock here. But few know of the spectacle that set its course.

Fifty years ago, on a foggy Tuesday, Dec. 16, 1975, a battered, two-story, 1909 building eased off Port of Seattle property along the Duwamish River in West Seattle. Once a boat shop and Boeing’s original airplane factory, the edifice had been long abandoned. That day, its 150-by-65-foot frame, weighing 325 tons, began a two-mile barge journey upriver, arriving at the Duwamish’s east bank. The next day, it rolled across East Marginal Way to its eventual home base.

Bright red, with distinctive white lettering, the building was Seattle’s beloved Red Barn.

On the eve of the nation’s bicentennial, the move became what the first executive director, Howard Lovering, calls the museum’s “fulcrum” — the pivotal moment turning civic nostalgia into collective action.

The move, following the shortest route from points A to B, was a nail-biter. “The industrial canal was a wonderful way to do it,” says Lovering, 88, “but it wasn’t easy. The structure was in such bad shape that it was going to fall apart if you tried to move it. It had to be secured.”

The bigger challenge was an electricians’ strike. “We had to cross East Marginal Way, and the high-tension wires there carried an awful lot of power,” Lovering says. “Facilities people said we needed a three- to four-foot rise, and there was no crew to do it. They said, ‘If you cross the street, this wood structure with its wrought-iron fire exits, you’d have the world’s largest toaster.’

“It scared the heck out of all of us. I ended up in the union hall saying, ‘Is there some way we can get those raised?’ They cared enough about this building to say, ‘No, we can’t do that, but we know a non-union firm that might.’ And those wires were raised just adequately for us to pass under. When we got across, everybody breathed a sigh of relief, and we headed for the taverns.”

And the museum’s new home began to soar.

A 1976 open house drew 20,000. The restored Red Barn opened in 1983. Then-Vice President George H.W. Bush headlined the 1987 opening of the next-door Great Gallery. Today, the much-expanded museum lures a half-million visitors and serves 140,000 students each year.

Lovering still marvels: “I’m not sure all of that would have happened without the move.”

WEB EXTRAS

Big thanks to Ted Huetter, Alison Bailey, Peder Nelson, Cody Othoudt, Jeff McCord and especially Howard Lovering for their invaluable help with this installment!

To see Clay Eals‘ 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photos while hearing this column read aloud by Clay, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column.

Below, you will find a video of the 1975 Red Barn move, a present-day video interview of Howard Lovering, 7 additional photos and 9 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com, Washington Digital Newspapers and other sources that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

See this 2020 article on Howard Lovering at MarketingNW and listen to Lovering being interviewed earlier this fall by Feliks Banel on Cascade of History.