Nicholson & Hall Corp., an 88-year-old Buffalo boiler making company, made history in July by installing a massive, record-setting boiler at a power facility in Queens, New York.

But the Cobblestone District firm isn't the only Buffalo heavy lifter to make its mark in the last several years. Another area firm made it into the Guinness World Records when it weighed one of NASA's launch pads, and another set its own record and went on to break it -- twice.

At 3,000 tons (5,899,510 pounds, to be exact) and 124 feet high, the boiler Nicholson & Hall installed was the heaviest and tallest one-piece shipment of a boiler in the United States, company officials said. Sixty feet wide and 118 feet long, it was fabricated in Indonesia, assembled in Mexico and welded to a barge to be brought to Queens. "If the waves were higher than seven feet, they couldn't transport it," said William M. Cole Jr., Nicholson & Hall's project manager for the job in Queens. It took 15 days to transport the unit from Tampico, Mexico to New York.

The boiler -- or more precisely, the heat recovery steam generator -- was installed as part of the second phase of construction at a natural gas power plant on Steinway Street in Astoria, Queens, owned by Astoria Energy LLC.

The additions are part of a clean-energy expansion to the existing plant, built in 2005, that will capture waste heat from the gas generator and make it more energy efficient. The new generator will produce an additional 550 megawatts of power, doubling the plants current output.

Normally, a project like the one in Astoria needs to be built on location, but builders decided to take advantage of an interesting feature of the Steinway Street site: its proximity to a deep-water port. A few hundred yards away from the Long Island Sound, the location allowed contractors to build the plant abroad, where labor costs are lower, and ship it on deep-water barges to New York in only a few pieces. Nicholson & Hall were hired by SNC-Lavalin Corp. to install the additions to the plant.

Other components to the project -- the smokestacks the company put up in June, the duct work it installed in July -- all came to Astoria in pieces. The original power plant, not installed by Nicholson & Hall, was built the same way.

The heat recovery steam generator put in place last month was hauled to New York basically as one 3,000-ton unit.

Was installing such a large boiler difficult?

"For our standpoint, with our experience, no ... If you asked 'Joe the Baker' to do it, it would be insurmountable," Cole said.

The company will be paid approximately $10 million for its work.

The Buffalo firm, at 41 Columbia St., was hired for the level of expertise it could bring to the project, company officials said. The company was founded in 1922 and has been owned by the Madia family for more than 40 years.

Record-holder

Founded only four years after Nicholson & Hall, International Chimney Corp. set the Guiness record for heaviest building moved on rubber wheels in 1999 when it transported the 2,700-ton GEM Theater 1,850 feet, or four city blocks, in downtown Detroit to make way for Ford Field, home of the Detroit Lions. In 2000, it broke that record with its 1,110-foot move of Minneapolis' 2,908-ton Shubert Theater and broke it again by transporting Building No. 51 at Newark International Airport, which weighed in at approximately 6,700 tons.

But the job that got the Williamsville-based company the most attention was successfully moving the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in Buxton, N.C. The historic 200-foot, 5,000-ton lighthouse, built in 1870, had to be moved a half a mile inland as the approaching coastline threatened to undermine the building's foundation. The relocation won the firm the job of the year distinction from the American Society of Civil Engineers.

"It was probably considered the most difficult job ever," International Chimney President Rick Lohr said. "We've done more difficult jobs, but without the sexual appeal."

Approximately 20 percent of the company's business is structural relocation, mostly involving brick and concrete buildings. The rest comes from designing, constructing, repairing and demolishing chimneys.

How heavy?

Buffalo Hydraulic on Walden Avenue, too, is a heavy lifter, regularly devising systems to lift bridges weighing several thousand tons across the world. In the winter of 2004, the company was contracted to weigh two of NASA's launch pads to see what modifications needed to be made for the agency's next generation of space shuttle. The company worked out a system of 21 hydraulic lifts to hoist the pads, weighing in at 5.34 million and 5.28 million pounds.

So is there a concentration of big movers in Buffalo?

"I don't think we're unique when compared to any other city," said Bob Phillips, president of Buffalo Hydraulic.

"Not really. In fact, there are not a lot of mom-and-pop movers in the area," Lohr said, referring to smaller, family-run moving outfits. He said area firms have had some jobs that are high-profile nationally but under-the-radar in Buffalo.

"There are a lot of pocket industries in Buffalo that are pretty quiet," he said.

Nicholson & Hall will finish up with the boiler portion of the project in September, and return to install air pollution equipment at the end of the year as the generator gets running. The recession, though, is just starting to hit the company, as books for next year are slow.

"We have been absolutely stymied," Nicholson & Hall President Michael R. Madia said, noting a slowdown in the past for or five months and that "almost all" projects have stopped. "The brakes are slammed ... usually we'd be booked for next year. Nuh-uh."

After a banner year in 2007 with $106 million in sales, revenue has slipped to $69 million in 2008 and $57 million in 2009 as the economic downturn took hold.

dgrandoni@buffnews.comnull