Housing: A Special Concern

The conversion of barns to housing is not new, but has become increasingly popular in recent years. Yet the changes involved in converting most barns to housing are so great that such conversions rarely preserve the historic character of the resource. Ordinarily, numerous windows are inserted, walls are heavily insulated and refinished, the interior volume is greatly reduced, chimneys and other fixtures normally lacking in barns are added, and site changes, such as close-in parking and residential landscaping are made, giving the building a greatly altered site. Many other barns are "converted" to houses by dismantling them, discarding the exterior, and reusing the internal structural system in a new building. The beams are saved, but the barn is lost.

In cases where the conversion from barns to houses has been successful, the positive outcome results in large measure from the careful choice of the barn: A modest-sized barn with a sufficient number of existing residential-scale windows, in which nearly the whole internal volume can be used as is, without building numerous new partitions or extending a new floor across the open space (haylofts in such cases serving as loft-space for "second story" bedrooms).

Summary

Historic barns form a vital part of our Nation's heritage. Not every historic barn can be saved from encroaching development, or easily brought back into productive use. Yet thousands of such structures can be repaired or rehabilitated for continued agricultural use or for new functions without destroying the very qualities that make them worth saving. By carefully examining the historic significance of each structure, owners of historic barns can draw up plans that preserve and reuse these historic structures while maintaining their historic character.

NOTES

(1) Nore V. Winter, "Design on the Farm: A Rural Preservation Forum," Unpublished proceedings from a Conference sponsored by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Denver, Colorado, January 13-14, 1986.

(2) Descriptions of the primary barn types featured in this section are heavily indebted to Eric Arthur and Dudley Witney, The Barn: A Vanishing Landmark in North America. Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, Ltd., 1972.

(3) John Fitchen, The New World Dutch Barn: A Study of Its Characteristics, Its Structural System, and Its Probable Erectional Procedures. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1968, p 136.

(4) Washington's "round" barn, actually a 16-sided barn, is shown in Lowell J. Soike, Without Right Angles: The Round Barns of Iowa. Des Moines: Iowa State Historical Department, 1983. Round, octagonal and other polygonal barns are normally all classed as "round barns." When it is necessary to be more precise, the term "true round" is used to distinguish round barns from hexagonal, octagonal, or other polygonal barns. The Shaker Round Barn is a true round barn. Gutted by fire in 1864, the barn was rebuilt shortly thereafter. See Polly Matherly and John D. McDermott, Hancock Shaker Village National Historic Landmark study, History Division, National Park Service, Washington, D.C.

(5) In addition to the sources mentioned above, the following studies were important sources for this section: Mark L. Peckham, "Central Plan Dairy Barns of New York Thematic Resources," Albany: New York State Division for Historic Preservation, 1984; and James E. Jacobsen and Cheryl Peterson, "Iowa Round Barns: The Sixty Year Experiment Thematic Resources," Des Moines: Iowa State Historical Department, 1986. These thematic studies document barns listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

(6) Charles Klamkin, Barns: Their History, Preservation, and Restoration. New York: Hawthorn, 1973, p 57.