Preservation of Historic Barns

Understanding Barns and Their History

Historic barns are preserved for a number of reasons. Some are so well built that they remain useful even after a hundred years or more. Many others are intimately connected with the families who built them and the surrounding communities. Others reflect developments in agricultural science or regional building types.

Before restoring a historic barn or rehabilitating it for a new use, an owner should study the building thoroughly. This process involves finding out when the barn was built, who built it, and why. It means understanding how the building was changed through the years. It means assessing the condition of the barn, and understanding its components. This process has as its end an appreciation of the building's historic character, that is, the sense of time and place associated with it. It is this physical presence of the past that gives historic buildings their significance.

To assess the historic character of a barn, an owner should study old photographs, family records, deeds, insurance papers, and other documents that might reveal the building's appearance and history. Neighbors and former owners are often important sources of information. Local libraries, historical societies and preservation organizations are additional sources of help.

As part of this overall evaluation, the following elements should be assessed for their contributions to the property. They are the principal tangible aspects of a barn's historic character, and should be respected in any work done on it.

A barn is integral with its setting--orchards, ponds, fencing, streams, country roads, windmills, and silos. Photo: Jack E. Boucher, HABS Collection, NPS.

Setting. Setting is one of the primary factors contributing to the historic character of a barn. Farmers built barns in order to help them work the land; barns belong on farms, where they can be seen in relation to the surrounding fields and other structures in the farm complex. A barn crowded by suburbs is not a barn in the same sense as is a barn clustered with other farm buildings, or standing alone against a backdrop of cornfields. Hence, the preservation of barns should not be divorced from the preservation of the setting: farms and farmland, ranches and range, orchards, ponds, fields, streams and country roads.

Other important elements of setting include fences, stone walls, roads, paths, barnyards, corrals, and ancillary structures such as windmills and silos. (Silos, indeed, have become so closely associated with barns as nearly to have lost their "separate" identities.) These features help place the building in the larger agricultural context, relating it to its purpose in the overall rural setting.