Van Allen house in Mount Pleasant moved

Posted on Sep 11, 2009 by Admin.

The boyhood home of famed astrophysicist James A. Van Allen has been moved to a vacant lot that preservationists want to transform into a one-block museum.

The boyhood home of famed astrophysicist James A. Van Allen in Mt. Pleasant

The 147-year-old house was sold at an auction and donated to the Henry County Heritage Trust. Police diverted traffic for two hours while the house was being moved.

The house now sits next to a vacant elementary school building that Van Allen attended. The trust owns the school lot, and hopes to convert the school into a museum, with the house highlighting the Van Allen family.

Van Allen died in 2006 at age 91. In the late 1950s, he designed instruments for a satellite that discovered bands of intense radiation surrounding the earth, now known as the Van Allen Belts.