Historic Significance
Architectural description: This is a 1 1/2 story side or eave-entry bank barn with a mortared fieldstone foundation. The main facade faces west towards Black Rock Turnpike, which runs approximately north-south. The main entry is a pair of X braced exterior sliding doors. The south gable-facade has an arched window just beneath the apex of the roof. The vertical siding of this facade extends below grade. The roof has a projecting overhang on all four sides. Atop the asphalt shingled roof is a Italianate cupola. The vertical siding that sheathes the barn is painted red with white trim. The barn is built using square rule timber framing construction.
Historical significance: The oldest barns still found in the state are called the "English Barn,” “side-entry barn,” “eave entry,” or a 30 x 40. They are simple buildings with rectangular plan, pitched gable roof, and a door or doors located on one or both of the eave sides of the building based on the grain warehouses of the English colonists' homeland. The name "30 by 40" originates from its size (in feet), which was large enough for 1 family and could service about 100 acres. The multi-purpose use of the English barn is reflected by the building's construction in three distinct bays - one for each use. The middle bay was used for threshing, which is separating the seed from the stalk in wheat and oat by beating the stalks with a flail. The flanking bays would be for animals and hay storage.
The 19th century saw the introduction of a basement under the barn to allow for the easy collection and storage of a winter's worth of manure from the animals sheltered within the building. The bank barn is characterized by the location of its main floor above grade, either through building into a hillside or by raising the building on a foundation. This innovation, aided by the introduction of windows for light and ventilation, would eventually be joined by the introduction of space to shelter more animals under the main floor of the barn.
Italianate is a Romantic architectural style, fashionable in England and the U.S. in the 1840s and 1850s, and characterized by low-pitched, heavily bracketed roofs, asymmetric informal plan, square towers, and often round-arched windows.
Field Notes
The milking area of this Italianate barn, like many of the barns in the area, was given a concrete floor early in the 20th century.