Barn Record Roxbury

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Building Name (Common)
Judds Bridge Farm
Building Name (Historic)
Judds Bridge Farm
Address
237 Judds Bridge Road, Roxbury
Typology
Overview

Designations

n/a

Historic Significance

Architectural description:

Barn I:

This small barn stands on the south side of Judds Bridge Road with a long narrow barn to its west and the main dairy barn to its east. Features include: (no dimensions), small peak-roofed barn stands with its gable ends to the north and south; metal cupola centered at roof ridge; wood frame; clapboard; red paint.

Barn II:

This building is significant as a very rare example of the Colonial Revival-style dairy barn—that is, it was specifically designed to resemble an oversized colonial-era house. Among the notable “colonial” features are the saltbox profile, façade overhang, 12-over-12 sash and broad white painted clapboards.

The rambling barn complex stands on the south side of Judds Bridge Road with the Shepaug River running to the east. There are high wooded ridges to the east and west. Features include:(no dimensions); peak-roofed barn stands with its gable ends to the east and west: north façade has five window bays and ½-story overhang above first floor; upper level windows 12-pane sash set over 12-over-12 double-hung sash with door off center to east; brick chimney off center to west; cross-braced wagon doors centered in west gable end; roof slopes to ground story in rear (south); rear el connects to complex of long, low one-story peak-roofed annex buildings (red paint with white trim) with metal roof ventilators and metal-clad, domed silo to south; second concrete silo with domed metal roof stands at southeast corner of main barn; wood frame; drop siding.

Barn III:

This low-slung freestanding barn displays the same design as the rear wings on the main barn complex at Judds Bridge Farm.

The barn stands on the south side of Judds Bridge Road, to the west of the main dairy complex. Features include: (no dimensions); long, low-sling peak-roofed barn stands with gable ends to the north and south; north gable end serves as primary elevation; door centered between pair of 6-over-6 double-hung sash window; tripartite arrangement of windows and loft door centered above entry; narrow brick chimney projects on east side; three metal cupolas centered on roof ridge; drop siding; wood frame; red paint with white trim.

Barn IV:

The building stands on the south side of Judds Bridge Road, hard on the road, at the western end of the dairy complex. A wooded hillside is to the southwest. Features include: (no dimensions); peak-roofed building with simple rectangular profile; narrow brick chimney at northeast corner; 6-over-6 double-hung window sash; small peak-roofed wing extends to east; both sections stand with gable ends to the road; wood frame; drop siding; red paint with white trim.

Barn V:

The shed stands in an open site to the southwest of the main dairy complex on the south side of Judds Bridge Road. A wooded ridge rises to the immediate southwest. Features include: (no dimensions); long, low shed stands with primary elevation facing east; shed-roof on brackets, shelters five open bays; 6-pane window at north gable end; wood frame; drop siding; red paint with white trim.


Historical significance:

The 19th century saw the introduction of the Gentleman’s barn. While many farmers were striving for efficiency to compete with farms in the middle of the country, a new type of farmstead appeared in Connecticut: the gentleman’s farm. These barns were frequently designed by famous architects and were part of giant complexes that combined the luxury of a weekend retreat with the grit of a working farm.

The term dairy barn is used as early as the 18th century (along with “cow house”). Modern dairy barns are characterized by their interior arrangements of stanchions and gutters to facilitate milking and the removal of manure.  In some cases this is just a few stalls in the corner of a barn, in others it can be a large barn dedicated to that single purpose.

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 New England barn or gable front barn was the successor to the English barn and relies on a gable entry rather than an entry under the eaves. The gable front offers many practical advantages. Roofs drain off the side, rather than flooding the dooryard. Although it was seen by many as an improvement over the earlier side entry English Barn, the New England barn did not replace its predecessor but rather coexisted with it. It this case, both an eave entry and a gable entry are used.

Concrete silos were sometimes poured in place in one piece, but the more common practice was to pour large interlocking rings that were then stacked, or vertical concrete planks. As with wooden stave silos, the structures are held together with adjustable steel hoops, spaced about fifteen inches apart. Since concrete does not expand and contract with changes in moisture levels, the hoops on concrete stave silos were usually tightened only once after the structure was built. Inside, these silos are coated with a cement wash.  In the mid-20th century, a system of metal panelized silos became the most advanced technology for silo construction, until silos were rendered obsolete by the current method of plastic shrink-wrapping.

A shed is typically a simple, single-story structure in a back garden or on an allotment that is used for storage, hobbies, or as a workshop. Sheds vary considerably in the complexity of their construction and their size, from small open-sided tin-roofed structures to large wood-framed sheds with shingled roofs, windows, and electrical outlets. Sheds used on farms or in industry can be large structures.

Rather than hurriedly carting large loads of hay from distant fields to the main barn at harvesttime, farmers often found it easier to store New England’s leading crop near its source.  Field barns were used to store hay until it was needed during the winter.  By waiting until a good snow cover, farmers often found it easier to draw the hay by sled to the main barn to replace that consumed by the herd.  During the second half of the nineteenth century, farmers occasionally converted their older, obsolete English barns into field barns by moving them into fields.  Some of these field barns had formerly served as sheep barns during the sheep boom of the early nineteenth century.

Field Notes

Information from a survey of Roxbury by Rachel Carley."I worked at Judds Bridge (Farm) on weekends when I was a freshman in high school. That was in ’67. I wasn’t 16 yet but there’s a lot of hand labor on farms and there was a lot of stuff for a 16 year old to do. (Judds Bridge Farm) was beef cattle then. In the fall of the year they were chopping the corn and filing the silo. I could drive the tractor and haul the wagons in. I could also go in the silo, walk around and pack it down just walking on it. You had a fork and spread it (the corn) around as it blew in. The more you walked on it, the more you could get in the silo. Sounds like a high school kid who weighed 150 pounds isn’t going to make a difference but you’d be surprised, it does. You do it constantly, every load that comes is. You’d be working at it no more than 3 or 4 weeks. You started in the middle of September and were done by the middle of October. Then the first of November you got some frost: picking corn for ear corn had to be frosted, frozen and dried. You had to wait for it to dry. You had to get moving pretty quick if you got a snowstorm in December, but you were pretty well done (by then). Judds Bridge (Farm) used to bottle some of its milk. On the bottle it said, “Produced under certified standards.” That was a step that most dairy farmers couldn’t achieve. To do so you had to have a spotless operation to meet the certified standard. The space in the barn over the animals where hay would be stored was kept empty. You could put grain up there but no hay. That was because of the conditions with the dust and dirt of hay, you couldn’t put hay over cows to be for production to be under certified standard. All the barns at Judds Bridge had plastered walls. You should have seen it in the ’40s! You wouldn’t believe it: you’d go down through those barns, all white on top and gray on the bottom. They were painted, not whitewashed. All the people who worked in the barn in the ’40s wore white clothes. It was a very clean operation. Judds Bridge owned land on Sentry Hill and Tamarack Lane on the left. Judds Bridge owned a whole other farm down there. That’s where a lot of the Thompsons from Roxbury lived and worked: it was called The Lanes (20 Tamarack Road). They had cattle down there as well. They raised their own corn down at the river bottom but all the hay to feed the cows came from Washington. What was called Shiner Mountain was all Judds Bridge land. I think it was close to 2000 acres." — Jim Conway "I went to Judds Bridge Farm in my teen years. I boarded: they had a boarding house which was quite exciting. There was a family who lived in the boarding house; the wife would also be our mother, as it were. There were five of us in 1941 to 1945. (I became draftable) while I was there but I got a deferment because they thought I was a valuable person on the home front and that I should be there. I was mainly a test cow person. You try to make a cow that was real high in milk production and buttermilk and then you could sell your calves for whatever you asked. In this case, I would milk by hand. They had the main troupe of 75 cows or so in each barn and there were 4 barns: Brown Swiss and one Jersey. Everyone got milked twice a day, but there was one barn right along the river, (those cows) were milked three times a day. I had nothing to do with that except for a couple of times I took the part of the man milking. I tell you they were fussy cows. They were fussy about letting down their milk. Sometimes you had to throw them feed to distract them and that would do the trick. There was a separate barn that was a calf barn. So there were 5 barns." — Andy Piskura This main core of Judds Bridge farm originated when Raoul Metcalf began buying up farms to create a large dairy operation around 1932. A gentleman farmer, Metcalf, assembled his acreage by acquiring some fifteen farms in the Shepaug River Valley with the help of realtor George DeVoe, who subsequently managed the farm for him from 1933 to 1947. When Metcalf died in 1965, some of the land was sold in bits and pieces, but publisher Arthur Carter, who owns the farm today, later purchased a large portion (1,100 acres). As a wholesale operation, Judds Bridge, shipped out its milk by truck, primarily to Bridgeport, but imported as much as 10,000 tons of feed, delivered by rail to a depot that still stands across the road. The farm was the only dairy operation in Roxbury to bottle its own milk, up to 400 quarts a day. At its peak, the herd of 300 cows, primarily Jerseys and Brown Swiss, produced 2400 quarts daily.

Use & Accessibility

Use (Historic)

Use (Present)


Exterior Visible from Public Road?

Yes

Demolished

n/a

Location Integrity

Unknown

Environment

Related features

Environment features

Relationship to surroundings

n/a

Typology & Materials

Building Typology

Materials


Structural System

Roof materials


Roof type


Approximate Dimensions

n/a

Source

Date Compiled

06/30/2011

Compiled By

Rachel D. Carley - CH

Sources

Carley, Rachel D., Barn Stories from Roxbury Connecticut, Roxbury Historic District Commission/Town of Roxbury/CT Commission on Culture & Tourism, 2010.

Cunningham, Jan, Roxbury, A Historic and Architectural Survey, Roxbury Historic District Commission, 1996-97.

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, 213 pages.

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