Historic Barns of Connecticut

Designations

n/a

Historic Significance

Architectural description:

This is a 1 ½ story three-bay, side- or eave-entry bank barn with a mansard roof and shed-roofed addition. The barn’s main facade faces Route 32 . The ridge line runs parallel to the street. The main entrance of the barn is a pair of interior sliding doors in the center bay. The right bay of the main facade has a pass-through door. Centered above the eave is a gable-roofed dormer with a six-over-six double hung window. The left facade has a pass-through door in the right corner and in the left corner is a fixed six-pane window. The rear facade has a shed-roofed addition which appears to have a series of open bays on the basement level. Above the eave of the mansard roof is a gable-roofed dormer with a six-over-six double hung window. The right facade has an overhead door in the left corner. There appears to have been a haymow door centered above the overhead door that is now boarded up. The barn has vertical siding that is painted white and a mortared fieldstone foundation. The roof is straight with a flare and has asphalt shingles and a concave mansard-roofed cupola with dentils.

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.

Field Notes

n/a

Use (Historic)

• agriculture

Use (Present)

• unknown

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Exterior Visible from Public Road?

Yes

Demolished

n/a

Location Integrity

Unknown

Related features

• Shed

Environment features

• Open Land
• Residential

Relationship to surroundings

The barn is located right on Route 32. Unable to determine relationship to associated house.

Building Typology

• Carriage House

Materials

• Fieldstone
• Vertical Siding

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Structural System

n/a

Roof materials

• Asphalt Shingle

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Roof type

• Mansard

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Approximate Dimensions

n/a

Date Compiled

04/26/2010

Compiled By

T. Levine and S. Lessard, reviewed by CT Trust

Sources

Photographs by Rick Spencer (rspencer02@snet.net).- 12/09/2009

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

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