Barn Record Sherman

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Building Name (Common)
Happy Acres Farm
Building Name (Historic)
Happy Acres Farm
Address
2 Taber Road, Sherman
Typology
Overview

Designations

Historic Significance

Architectural description:

All the barns on the property share a common period and style of construction c. 1900. They are post and beam frames with square rule pegged mortise and tenon joinery, and many include timber trusswork with iron tension rods in their upper loft levels, facilitating the creation of wide span basement or ground floor levels for livestock and equipment. The timbers are generally sawn and their relatively slender dimensions reflect an increase in engineer-designed structures, which replaced the over-sized members that had been common in the early 1800s, when wood was plentiful and the labor of hewing resulted in leaving excess material in place.

These barns have concrete foundations, vertical board siding painted red with white trim, and green asphalt shingle roofs with overhangs at the rakes and eaves. Typically each barn has one or two gable-roofed cupolas with louvered openings in all sides.

Barn I – English bank:

This is a 1 ½-story, five-bay extended English bank barn, with its ridge-line oriented east-west. It is set into a south-facing slope. The upper level opens on the north side and the basement level is exposed and opens to the south side, where the main barnyard area is located. The main block is 40’ x 70’ and a lower 1 ½-story extension, 40’ x 40’, also gable-roofed is attached at the east end. The main block has an upper level hay loft and basement level configured for dairy cow stanchions. The extension was formerly a bull barn but is now configured with box stalls.

Barn II – New England bank:

This barn is a 40’ x 65’ 1 ½-story gable-roofed four-bay New England bank barn oriented with its ridge-line north south. It is attached to the west gable-end of Barn I at the northeast bays of the east eave-side. The two barns form an L-shape, sheltering the north and west sides of the barnyard/turnaround area. The upper level hay loft is accessed from the north side at the upper level grade. The lower level banked basement dairy stable is accessed from the east eave-side at the lower grade level. Attached at the south gable-end is a shed-roofed shelter for the manure spreader and an early milk room, later used as an icehouse.
The roof has one gable-roofed cupola with pairs of louvered openings, matching Barn I.

Horse barn:

This is a 1 ½-story three-bay gable-roofed structure, 30’ x 40’, with its ridge-line oriented east-west. It sits along the south side of the barnyard, at a slightly lower elevation that the main barns.
The east gable-end has a pair of exterior sliding doors leading into a clear-span interior area. A sliding hay door is above, flanked by hinged hay doors, and a six-over-six double-hung window with trim is in the attic gable peak. The north eave-side is partially banked into the slope. The west gable-end has a row of six four-pane stable windows with trim, indicating the location of horse stalls inside. Hay doors and an attic window mirror the east end. The grade slopes down toward the south, partially exposing the concrete foundation on the west and south sides. The south eave-side has two nine-pane windows in the right (eastern) bay, lighting the open work area.
A gable-roofed cupola on the ridge has double arched openings on each side; these are now filled in solid but probably had louvers originally.

Historical significance:

Happy Acres is significant for its intact landscape with the historic farmhouse and extensive complex of barns, which represent a vanishing type of cultural landscape in rural Connecticut. The barns are an unusually coherent group constructed at one time by a woman gentleman farmer, and subsequently farmed as a commercial dairy operation by the Hapanowich family. The farmstead provides a picture of progressive agriculture in 1900 and of the peak period of 20th-century dairy farming in the 1950s. The two main dairy barns and horse barn are intact post and beam structures with the iron reinforcement typical of late 19th-century timber framing. The array of silos presents an unusually complete “history” of silo construction, with the dates and sequence documented by farmer Tony Hapanowich. The farm is among the last in the local area to be still actively using its Harvestore silo. The history of the Hapanowich family as farmers in Sherman contributes to the story of immigrant farmers in Connecticut in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Field Notes

Listed on the State Register of Historic Places 6/04/2014. Barn Type: Dairy, Cattle See Gary Albert's Pictures Happy Acres will soon be acquired by the Town of Sherman and operated as a trust farm by a foundation to be established and a tenant family in residence after the death of Tony, who will maintain lifetime residency. See "SH" 18

Use & Accessibility

Use (Historic)

Use (Present)


Exterior Visible from Public Road?

Yes

Demolished

n/a

Location Integrity

Original Site

Environment

Related features

Environment features

Relationship to surroundings

Located at the northwest corner of Taber Road and Route 39 North, this is a large farmstead, one of the last remaining in Sherman. The farmhouse is a 2-story center-hall colonial style dwelling with a full-width front porch and two end chimneys. The barnyard is located northwest of the house, with barns wrapping around the north and west sides, and additional barns to the south forming three sides of the yard. An additional barn is to the northwest, and four silos are to the north of the barn complex. Three appear to be wooden stave silos and one is a “Harvestore” type enameled metal. The farm is at the northern tip of Sherman, in an area of open farmland and forested hills just east of the New York state line and west of the Housatonic River.

Typology & Materials

Building Typology

Materials


Structural System

n/a

Roof materials


Roof type


Approximate Dimensions

n/a

Source

Date Compiled

12/28/2010

Compiled By

Charlotte Hitchcock, reviewed by CT Trust

Sources

Photographs and field notes by Charlotte Hitchcock, 1/28/2007 and 4/16/2013. Additional photographs by John Jenner and Hildi Grob, 12/26/2010.

Interview with Tony Hapanowich, 4/16/2013, at the site.

Town of Sherman Assessor’s Records, Parcel ID: 26-6 (23.73 acres), 26-4 (50 acres), 27-77 (3.15 acres), 26-76 (14.55 acres), 23-28 (5.58 acres).

Aerial views from:  http://maps.google.com/  and http://www.bing.com/maps/ accessed 8/26/2013.

Historical aerial photography and maps accessed at UConn MAGIC: 
http://magic.lib.uconn.edu/mash_up/1934.html
http://magic.lib.uconn.edu/historical_maps_connecticut_towns.html
Clark, Richard, Clark’s Map of Litchfield County, Philadelphia, 1859.

USGS Historical Maps accessed 8/26/2013 at http://historical.mytopo.com/ .

UTM coordinates: http://itouchmap.com/latlong.html .

Connecticut State Library online: iconn.org or http://www.cslib.org/iconnsitemap/staff/SiteIndex.aspx#directories

Cunningham, Jan, Connecticut’s Agricultural Heritage: an Architectural and Historical Overview, Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation & State Historic Preservation Office, 2012.

Kurumi.com – Connecticut roads web site, http://www.kurumi.com/roads/ct/ct39.html , accessed 8/27/2013.

Sexton, James, PhD; Survey Narrative of the Connecticut Barn, Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation, Hamden, CT, 2005, http://www.connecticutbarns.org/history.

Sherman Historical Society, www.shermanhistoricalsociety.org/history‑of‑sherman.html

Sherman Sentinel Houses, published in the Sherman Sentinel, Sherman CT and in book form, 1st Edition 1961, 2nd Edition 1978.
Shimren, Yonat, “Farmer tends his fields and his town,” News Times, 7/28/1990.

U.S. Federal Census, accessed at http://persi.heritagequestonline.com/hqoweb/library/do/census/search/basic.

Visser, Thomas D., Field Guide to New England Barns & Farm Buildings, University Press of New England, 1997.

PhotosClick on image to view full file