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Denver’s 13th Avenue, normally a drowsy thoroughfare early Sunday morning, was crowded with heavy equipment, construction workers, police and onlookers, as a rigging company began moving the 13,840-square-foot Vance Kirkland studio to a new location.

“We can’t wait to see it going downhill,” said Todd Johnson, 47, who was at the corner of 13th Avenue and Pearl Street with his family, as movers loaded the 105-year-old building onto six sets of articulating wheels.

Crews are making preparations to move the Kirkland Studio building West on 13th Ave and then to the museums new home.

— AlanStedman7 (@AlanStedman7)

The estimated 150-ton studio was supported by a patchwork of steel beams positioned below, and an operator controlled聽the wheels remotely, slowly guiding it through the streets聽to the location of the new Kirkland Museum at 12th Avenue and Bannock Street.

Traffic lights along 13th Avenue that would have blocked the building’s progress were detached from the poles that hold them aloft and swung to the side.

“We enjoyed the logistics of raising the light poles,” said Mandy Vink, 33, of Boulder.

Pole holding traffic light that normally faces 13th Ave. unlocked from pole and swiveled to move Kirkland studio.

— Tom McGhee (@dpmcghee)

Chris Ayres, 34, brought his 6-year-old son, David, from their home in Lone Tree to watch the move. “This guy loves watching big things move,” he said of the boy.

Mammoth Moving & Rigging, and Shaw Construction prepared the studio, detaching it from the museum. They were loading it onto the movers early Sunday to be transported eight blocks.

By noon, workers had moved the brick structure so that it was sitting on Pearl Street perpendicular to 13th Avenue, and a white, Kenworth truck cab waited nearby to be attached to the building and begin hauling it to its new location.

Making that turn onto the avenue was expected to be the most difficult part of trip, said Bill Mascarenaz, the move’s project manager. “This tight turn is what is making it difficult.”

Hydraulics controlled each set of wheels, moving them up or down to compensate for different elevations of the streets on which they would travel, Mascarenaz said.

Once the studio was on 13th, the trip was expected to take seven or eight hours.

Workers will be monitoring the building as it moves. “The building will tell us how fast to go,” Mascarenaz said. “If it gets a little creaky, we will slow it down.”

The studio was built in 1910 for artist Henry Read’s Students’ School of Art. From 1932 to 1946, Kirkland, who is among the most important Colorado artists, ran the Kirkland School of Art at studio at 1311 Pearl St.

“Moving the studio was integral. If we couldn’t have moved it, I don’t think we would have built the new museum,” said Maya Wright, Kirkland spokesman.

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The Kirkland Museum鈥檚 new facility near the Denver Art Museum and the Clyfford Still Museum in is on schedule to open in fall 2017.

The Kirkland Museum has worked closely with the historic preservation community to ensure that the move is safe, and the three-room studio arrives at its new location in good condition.

The Kirkland Museum has started rolling. Maybe a few feet. Possibly less.

— Capitol Hill Crime (@caphillcrime)