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By Jeffrey L. Marshall
I was not born a barn lover. Growing up in Levittown over 50 years ago, barns were still on the periphery of the landscape, but barely in my conscienceness. Now as I drive through Bucks County I marvel at these once indispensable structures that have endured centuries of threats from storms to fire to “progress.” Even for non-farmers, barns have come to represent our rural heritage and define life as it once was. “Barns”, as one writer stated, “…have come to help define life here, even as the purpose for which they were built slowly receded and vanished.” Barns have become more than buildings to store hay and shelter animals; they have become storehouses of our past and our culture.
I don’t know why, but one of my favorite barn quotes comes from Lyndon B. Johnson who reportedly once said, “Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one.” Perhaps it speaks to the recognition that barns are both special and threatened. As the land around us turns from farmland to modern Bucks County, we will continue to lose more of these local landmarks. As Scott Simmie of the Toronto Star wrote, ‘Heritage is in danger of rotting. Or burning. Or falling over in a very strong wind.”
Barns were once commonplace, but these stone and wood structures that were once the heart of our farms are disappearing. They may be magnificent or simple, but they are the essence of our history. Bucks County barns come in many sizes, shapes and styles. How barns were built depended on what they were designed to do; eventually, farmers in southeastern Pennsylvania developed a pattern of barns that, because they served similar functions, contained a number of similar features.
Until the twentieth century, barns were built with post and beam construction. These heavy timber frames were built to last centuries. Whether the exterior of a barn was stone, brick or wood, the interior of a barn is generally highlighted by a complex system of interlocking posts and beams that bring to mind both soaring cathedrals and tall ships Pennsylvania’s barns were a wonder even back in the 18th century. Mapmaker Lewis Evans wrote in his “A Brief Account of Pennsylvania” in 1753) “It is pretty to behold our back Settlements, where the barns are large as palaces, while the Owners live in log huts; a sign though of thriving farmers.” Establishing prosperous farms on the rich limestone soils of southeastern Pennsylvania, farm families built barn buildings that reflected their European ancestry as well as the indigenous materials of their new homeland. Bucks County has a wonderful collection of barns that reflect both English and Germanic building traditions.
From tiny log pens cut into wildness to ornate castles in the middle of vast fields, they tell the story of hard work: dedication, aspiration, and creativity. It is our story. Quite often humble exteriors often hide interiors of staggering beauty, craftsmanship, and age. The outstanding quality is as much due to their sense of spaciousness as to the fine carpentry. The wood framing of an old barn has a character and warmth only time can imbue.
Functionally, a barn is a farm building for sheltering, processing, and storing agricultural products, animals, and implements. But there is an emotional connection to barns that transcends their functions. Professor Thomas C. Hubka captured the essence of why the preservation of barns is a compelling topic. “Even for those who have only seen them in the media, barns have had a strong, enduring attraction for most Americans.”
“From the earliest European settlements in America, the barn has been a fundamental component of the farm and has become a symbol for the agrarian way of life. For increasingly urbanized, overwhelmingly nonfarm Americans, the barn still maintains a mythic status, even if the barn itself and the ways of its farming people are not precisely understood”.
One of the earliest references to settlers building barns comes from a letter written by Ambrose Barcroft of Solebury in 1723 to his father back in England in which he wrote “I am now about the building of a Barn of 4 Bay. It would cost me near £30 to let out, but [one of his indentured servants] is something of a Carpenter, and I think; with the assistance of a good workman a few days at the Setting up the frame, he'll do the work.” Barcroft had already arranged to obtain the clapboard and shingle for the barn.
One of the earliest references to what appears to be a bank barn is found in the March 14, 1798 Pennsylvania Gazette when Jonathan Paxson’s estate in Upper Makefield was advertised with “a large new barn and hay-house, with stabling under”. The earliest specific reference to a bank barn I have found is from the Pennsylvania Correspondent and Farmers’ Advertiser of August 5, 1805 when Isaac Vanhorne of Solebury advertised his “good stone bank Barn, 50 by 30 feet, with stabling under the whole”.
After the Civil War, barns grew bigger. Advances in farm technology, particularly the hay track and trolley system allowed for taller barns. Haymows were filled with mountains of loose hay to maintain animals throughout the year. Baled hay is four times heavier than loose hay and its weight can stress a two hundred year old barn. Today’s round bales that can easily way over a thousand pounds each often have to be stored outside the barn.
Bucks County barns are, by their location, Pennsylvania barns. However, when most people think about the “Pennsylvania Barn” they think of a two-level bank barn with a projecting forebay on the barnyard side. This feature was introduced by Pennsylvania Germans and became the distinctive feature of a “Pennsylvania German Barn”. The typical forebay barn is designed with the second floor extended out over the stable doors.
A variation to a projecting forebay is a barn where the stable wall was recessed. The most common form of a forebay bank barn in Bucks County is a closed-forebay barn. This form appears to be result of the fusion of English and Pennsylvania-German barn forms. The stone construction balanced gable and shallow roof slope all conform closely to English Lake District bank barns rather than the German “Sweitzer Barn”. These barns did not have projecting forebays. The Scheitzer Barn overhangs were formed by recessing the front stable wall and replacing stone with frame for the forebay front wall.
With a dominant English population and in the early settlement period of the county, the English barn-building tradition is the most common form of barn found in most of Bucks County, particularly for eighteenth century barns. Bucks County farmers were building barns incorporating the best of English and Pennsylvania traditions by the mid nineteenth century.
The principal English barn brought to America was the threshing barn: three bays wide, one bay deep, with a central drive. Common to most European countries, this barn type employed hewn, heavy timbers and was designed for grain threshing and hay storage. In general, English settlers also imported their tradition in which separate agricultural products, processes, and animals were housed in separate barns or outbuildings.
The classic English barn was not a two-level barn so there was not a lower level stable and a ramp to the second level. However, there two-level bank barns were built in England but without a forebay found on Pennsylvania barns. The classic Pennsylvania German barn is a large, banked barn with a forebay. The idea of a two-level barn, with an overhang over the stable doors forming a protected area was so useful that virtually all Bucks County, and eventually most Pennsylvania, farmers adopted the form. Bucks County farmers, like farmers everywhere, chose barn types based on what worked well; factors included climate, function, available building material, and finances as much as original ethnicity. By the mid nineteenth century, these were known nationally as Pennsylvania Barns. Since the upper level was used to store hay and wagons, a method was needed to get to the second floor. Many barns were built in to a hillside so that the wagon doors on the back side of the barn were on the higher ground level. When the topography didn’t provide for a natural hill, “barn hills” were built. The fact that these barns were banked into a hill or a hill was created has given rise to the term “bank barns” for these structures.
Even if a barn will never be used like it was, we can still preserve its character. I hate to see a barn become a bonfire or wood chips. It is difficult to justify the expenses of maintaining a barn once the farm has been subdivided. For that reason many barns are slowing falling down. It is for that reason that we like to celebrate the barns that are being preserved so that we call can appreciate them. Many people think that barns are protected by some governmental regulations, but the overwhelming majority of them are not. Private property owners shoulder the burden and we all share the benefit. We owe these barn owners our thanks. As Simmie noted “Old rural barns can be a fire hazard. They can also be an insurance burden for farmers. They can also be a home to endangered barn owls and a thing of enduring beauty.”
Eric Sloan, America’s pioneer in understanding the importance of our vanishing rural heritage wrote: “Whether you like an old barn for its structural beauty or have just enough of the poet in you to see it as a symbol of pioneer man, an old farm building is the past as well as the present; vanished generations have built themselves into it. It may have outlived its usefulness as modern farming goes, but like an old apple tree that is too far gone to bear perfect fruit, its value as beauty and symbol remains.”
Perhaps I am a bit of a poet. I like to believe that barns, like abandoned old houses, know when they are no longer loved and silently begin to go back to nature. Less romantic preservationists will tell you that barns begin to collapse when animals are removed. Those animals produced enough heat to prevent the ground from freezing. But when those creatures are gone, the annual freezing and thawing of the earth plays havoc with barns and that’s the reason so many barns are literally falling apart.
The National Trust notes, “To farmers, barns were as essential as the houses they lived in. To many of us, barns represent tradition, hard work, and independence. These associations are just as much a part of the barn as its framework and its roofing. The barn remains a powerful symbol, even as it disappears from the American Landscape”.
Traditionally, the best way to save historic structures is to give them economic viability. Unfortunately as agricultural technology changes and the agricultural landscape disappears this becomes more difficult. The single most important way to save barns may be learning about our rich and colorful heritage. Awareness will lead to appreciation that, in turn, will ensure that our history stays on the land, and is not confined to museums. I recall reading one of the most evocative images of barns was in one childhood memory of when they remembered their barn, they thought of “bats, rats, and hunting cats”.
In writing of barns in Washington, Mike Macdonald could have been writing about Bucks County barns when he wrote “As fewer people actually [use] barns for their designed purpose, more people, both residents and visitors, came to admire and love them. The hardworking old buildings, through steadfast endurance, [are] a symbol for a way of living that is sliding away.” Even people who wouldn’t rise before dawn at gunpoint to milk and feed a herd of dairy cattle find themselves drawn to the patient “sentinels standing over the agricultural fields.”
“You cannot view them closely without feeling tremendous admiration for the skill of their designers and builders. There is something honest and straightforward about their stance on the land, the way they define their fields without pretense. Barns are about plain speaking and practicality.”
It is sad to see something once so cherished, abandoned and forgotten. We need to educate people about bays, bents, forebays and purlins, but more importantly, generate an emotional connection to our barns.
For those who want to see Bucks County barns go to www.heritageconservancy.org and check out our “Barn Voyage” self-driving barn tours in the New Hope and Springtown areas, with two additional tours soon to be uploaded. Jeffrey L. Marshall is a Bucks County historian and the president of the Heritage Conservancy.