Barns of the Midwest

1

THE FARM BARNS OF THE AMERICAN MIDWEST

Allen G. Noble and Hubert G.H. Wilhelm

FEW OBJECTS ARE as visible or striking as the midwestern barn. Indeed, for many of us, the barn is the symbol of the Midwest. It conveys stability, hard work, stewardship, solid citizenship and rural values—never mind the stereotypes or our stereotypical ideals.

The barn stores a series of traditions, and not just those brought into middle America by conservative English and German farmers from the east. Settlement in the Midwest, although primarily of Anglo-Saxon origins, was never homogeneous. So, there never has been a midwestern barn. The barn of the Midwest was—and is—many barns common enough to be recognizable as midwestern. Of course, even the term Midwest has many definitions and interpretations.

DEFINING THE MIDWEST

Everyone knows there is a Midwest, but few can agree on its precise boundaries. Geographers have been among the leaders in attempting to identify the limits of the Midwest (fig. 1.1), but even they do not agree. Much of the reason for such lack of accord is that the Midwest is a concept that can be approached from a number of equally valid viewpoints.

Charles B. Hunt (1974), a geologist, did not examine the Midwest per se, but he did define three physiographic areas which make up the interior of the United States: the Central Lowland, the Interior Low Plateaus, and the Great Plains (fig. 1.1a). His orientation was entirely toward physical conditions, but, taken together, those physical areas make up a unified interior region. Each of these physiographic units has its own particular character, but all share certain traits, providing an underlying physical unity. All possess an interior, continental location and, partly as a result of this, have a stronger inward than outward focus. Such a focus is also partly the result of general homogeneity of land-form surface. No lofty mountain ranges or extensive hill lands interrupt the generally smooth to rolling plains. Of course, some areas are hillier than others; the Flint Hills of Kansas, the Driftless Area of Wisconsin, the Salem Plateau of Missouri, southern Indiana, southeastern Ohio, and the Pennyroyal of Kentucky are certainly areas of dissected surface. It may be significant that virtually all of these areas lie on the margins of the Midwest. They also share a history of nonglaciation. Throughout most of the rest of the Midwest recent glaciation has provided a mantle of soils that helps sustain surplus agricultural production.

Fig. 1.1. Maps giving various boundaries of the Midwest

Geographers J. Wreford Watson and Stephen Birdsall and John Florin approached the Midwest from this agricultural perspective. Watson (1967) identified an agricultural Midwest region which extends eastward to include all of West Virginia, an extension which would seem difficult to defend (fig. 1.1b). Equally problematic is the northeastern boundary which roughly bifurcates Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio. Watson’s western boundary appears to be more logical in dividing the Great Plains, roughly excluding areas of irrigated cultivation, but including the extensive, dry grain farming areas of the Plains.

Birdsall and Florin (1981) identified an agricultural core region (fig. 1.1c). Its boundaries were rather restricted on the north, west, and south, but extended eastward to include northwestern Pennsylvania and the extreme western edge of New York. Although Birdsall and Florin admitted that the term Middle West (or Midwest) will probably continue to be the most widely used and understood name for the U.S. portion of the continent’s agricultural core region, they hesitated to use the term itself (271). Instead they invented the term Deep North, which is meaningless and confusing to virtually everyone except the authors. They rather weakly defended their term by noting that "‘Deep North’ refers to an area of particular cultural intensity and pervasiveness, but it does not refer to an area that is farther north than other places (271).

Westward of the agricultural core region is another region of primarily agricultural activity which Birdsall and Florin (1981) labeled The Great Plains and prairies (297–323). This area is differentiated from the agricultural core essentially because of its more extensive agricultural systems, lower productivity per acre, sparser water resources, and lesser urbanization and manufacturing emphasis.

Alfred J. Wright (1948), an economic geographer, acknowledged the Middle West to be indefinitely defined. He recognized that it was perhaps the premier American economic region, but he added that it had achieved a regional character which transcends the economy and involves the cultural and political attitude of the people (239). Wright extended his boundaries of the Middle West to include portions of the eastern Great Plains (fig. 1.1d). Although sketched out almost a half century ago, Wright’s limits of a midwestern region are surprisingly appropriate today, a tribute to his careful scholarship and perception.

The concept of the Middle West has been examined by both Wilbur Zelinsky (1980) and James Shortridge (1985) from the standpoint of the vernacular, a people’s everyday perception and usage. Zelinsky’s vernacular Middle West, relying on the use of the region’s name in local city directories, consists of two parts: a core extending from eastern Ohio to central Kansas and from central Wisconsin to southern Missouri; and a periphery of small extensions—East to include Pittsburgh, South to incorporate western Kentucky and northern Arkansas, and West, and North, Montana, Wyoming and eastern Colorado (fig. 1.1e).

Shortridge (1985), basing his definition on respondents’ perceptions, primarily agrees with Zelinsky’s vernacular Middle West but includes all of Arkansas and most of Wyoming, and leaves out the high plains states (fig. 1.1f).

Finally, Zelinsky (1992), in another study, defines the Midwest from the perspective of cultural evolution, from the meshing of migration streams from the New England, the Middle Atlantic, and, possibly, Chesapeake Bay hearth areas. From extreme western New York and Pennsylvania, the region fans out westward as far as the central Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas (fig. 1.1g).

Considering all these delineations of the Middle West, the veracity of Zelinsky’s statement that, Everyone within or without the Middle West knows of its existence, but no one seems sure where it begins or ends, is evident (1992, 128). In point of fact, some agreement does exist. Beginning in the vicinity of the Pennsylvania panhandle, the eastern boundary of the consensus Midwest excludes southeastern Ohio, but includes northern Kentucky. Farther west, southern Missouri and southeastern Oklahoma are excluded.

Also outside the designation of Midwest is the northern half of Minnesota and Wisconsin, which lies on the sterile Canadian Shield, and the northern half of Michigan, an area of boreal forest also with little agriculture. Within these areas the landscape has a distinctive logged-over appearance that has little in common with the Midwest. Furthermore, the economy here is based upon extractive industries and tourism, and the settlement groups differ culturally from those further south.

The western boundary of the Midwest enjoys no such unanimity of definition. Some authors extend the region entirely across the Great Plains to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, a convenient and easily defined physical boundary. Others prefer to use the eastern boundary of the Great Plains as a limit. For the purposes of this study, we have chosen a western boundary roughly through the middle of the Great Plains (fig. 1.2). Such a boundary effectively divides the cultivated Great Plains from those areas in which livestock grazing is the predominant agricultural activity.

DEFINING THE BARN

Grazing activities normally do not require an investment in barns, other than those used as machinery sheds or for equipment storage. Crop agriculture, on the other hand, normally has a barn as its central focus. The same is also true of agriculture in which the focus is primarily upon dairying or animal raising aside from grazing. Thus, across the various farming areas of the Midwest, the barn, or a main structure with similar function, dominates each farmstead.

August Meitzen (1882), a well-known nineteenth-century German settlement geographer, wrote that the house is the embodiment of a people’s soul (Das Haus ist die Verkoerperung des Volksgeisies) (3). One can hardly argue with this observation of rural, vernacular, or folk houses. But, if the house reflects the soul of its owners, what about the barn? Although often structurally integrated with the house in Europe, the barn nevertheless represented a different image, one of work, surpluses, income, thrift, and risk-taking. To rephrase Meitzen, the barn then is the embodiment of a people’s economic worth. It is, to use Calkins and Perkins’ analogy from chapter 3, the farmer’s bank. In America, and especially so in the Midwest with its specialized, commercial agriculture, that image and function translated into extraordinary architectural forms, often appearing like veritable castles upon the rural landscape.

Fig. 1.2. The Midwest region

The word barn is defined in Webster’s as a building for storing farm produce and/or stabling livestock. Its origins in England refer more to the first function. The word is derived from a combination of two Anglo-Saxon words, here, meaning barley (or subsequently any grain), and ern, meaning place of storage. Cow house, stable, or some other term, is used to signify those structures providing animal shelter, although in the relatively mild climate of Great Britain animals are frequently left in the open during the entire year.

However, in North America, because of the harsher winter climate, the barn quickly assumed the functions both of animal shelter and crop storage. This was especially true for the earliest, simple barns in New England and elsewhere along the eastern seaboard, and along the advancing frontier as settlement pushed westward into the continent’s interior. Under these conditions, yeoman farmers could afford only a single barn that did double duty. Even the simple three-bay barns, which had evolved in England primarily to permit storage and processing of grains, were adapted in North America by introducing animal stalls on one side of the central threshing floor.

The barn, then, is defined in the American Midwest by the functions it performs, either originally or currently. These functions include animal shelter, crop storage, crop processing, equipment storage, and machinery repair. The barn refers to the place on the farm where any, or several, of these activities regularly takes place. However, if the building is specialized in function, its designation may carry an adjective, such as sheep barn or horse barn. Similarly, in some instances a substitute term, such as smoke house, machine shed, or sheep fold, may be used for the specialized-function structure, especially if a larger multipurpose barn is also on the farm.

FARMSTEAD PATTERNS AND THE POSITIONING OF THE BARN

The pattern of farmsteads and the relationship of the barn to the farmhouse and to other farm buildings have not been extensively analyzed. A few excellent studies do exist of individual farmsteads and very localized areas (Kiefer 1972), but these have not resulted in generalized studies applicable to larger areas and groups of barns. One highly impressionistic study by Robert Riley (1985) addresses the changing rural landscape of Illinois.

At least five factors—topography, weather, convenience or labor efficiency, land survey systems, and tradition—come into play in determining the arrangement of barns and other farmstead buildings. Most of the time, the various factors act in concert with one another, so that it is difficult or impossible to determine the extent of influence of a particular one.

Topography and other associated physical concerns, such as drainage and soil quality, act both negatively and positively. For example, slopes too steep or, conversely, too flat, promoting poor drainage, are avoided. However, a modest slope may encourage location of a bank barn (Kiefer 1972). A south-facing orientation secures maximum light, especially for stable areas underneath forebays. An orientation toward the east allows a barn to place its back against prevailing westerly winds. Local snow-accumulation tendencies also can influence barn locations. The effect of both topographical and weather conditions may be offset somewhat by how the land is marked off and divided up.

In much of the Midwest, the General Land Office survey system divides the surface geometrically. Roads run true and straight and in concert with compass directions. Barns and other farm buildings often line up in rigid conformity with survey lines, and the farmstead has an order imposed by the land division system. Riley (1985) notes that even the small country cemetery follows such an order with its plots and marker stones . . . lined up so that even the dead are settled on the grid system (79).

Riley also observes that, in level areas where the General Land Office survey system was employed, the siting of farmsteads obeyed just two general rules: They were square to the road (e.g., the survey lines), and, because of the prevailing westerly winds, hogs were housed to the east of the farmstead.

In some other areas, where topography is more rugged, such uniformity is absent and farmsteads follow the contours of the land. However, regularity still may be imposed by the hand of tradition. The original settlers of the land frequently laid out their farmsteads and positioned their barns in a way that seemed natural to them because they had seen farmsteads laid out this way all their lives. They instinctively followed their cultural guidelines, usually without even realizing they were doing so. The widespread occurrence of the courtyard plan among German-derived farmsteads is one example. Such an arrangement is widely recognized in the Midwest, but has not been closely studied.

The final factor governing barn positioning is convenience or labor efficiency. The barn did not need to be close to the house, except in areas of long, cold winters, but it was desirable to locate the barn closer to the fields than the house. Hence, barns are usually farther back from roads than are houses. Close proximity of the barn to outbuildings also was desirable.

Taking these factors into consideration, midwestern farmers usually laid out their farmsteads in one of three patterns. Most common are the farmsteads where all buildings have exactly the same orientation usually to compass directions. A second pattern can be termed the courtyard arrangement. In these cases, the house and barn form two sides of an open square. Smaller outbuildings define the remaining two sides. The third pattern is a more free-form arrangement, in which buildings vary in alignment, but generally follow the contour of a slope. Further study may reveal additional farmstead patterns.

The chapters which follow represent a premier undertaking, the comprehensive treatment of a long-overdue subject, the Midwestern Barn. These two elements, Midwest and barn, are inextricable related, forming the underpinning of a people’s spatial perception of the American heartland. Neither East nor West, but rather in the center, where the combination of level land, grass-covered and dark, fertile soils, an ideal climate, and usually abundant water from lakes and rivers offered, to all those who dared, a panacea for settlement and development.

As the barriers to westward migration fell, American migrants and foreign immigrants alike converged onto the central parts of the country guided by the spirit of manifest destiny, which included natural routeways, and, most importantly, the unfailing attraction of cheap and plentiful land. There were New Englanders and Easterners, including large numbers of Pennsylvania-Dutch and, of course, Southerners, especially Virginians, who came by way of the hills of Appalachia and rivers of Kentucky. The immigrants were a varied lot, but prominent among them were the Scots-Irish and the Germans. Within a time period of little more than a generation, however, these traditions would give way to new influences. In part, these changes resulted from acculturation, but, more importantly, they were caused by urbanization and industrialization, and the impact that these processes had on agriculture.

LOG CRIB BARNS

As the frontier of settlement passed into the Midwest, many early barns were constructed of log by advancing farmers, who either possessed log-building skills as part of their cultural baggage, or had perfected such techniques by association with other groups through a process of cultural transference in eastern United States (Jordan and Kaups 1989). The eastern margins of the Midwest were well-forested, so that log materials were readily available. However, as settlement The Farm Barns of the American Midwest progressed westward, suitable forest resources greatly diminished and logs disappeared as a common building material.

A second factor explaining the lack of log building in much of the Midwest was the relatively fertile soils covering large sections of the region, soils sufficiently rich to support prosperous agriculture that required larger and more elaborate barns. Thus, log structures were inadequate almost from the beginning of European settlement. The rolling hill lands of the southern fringes of the Midwest did not share in such agricultural prosperity. Hence, log crib barns continued to be built in these areas well into the twentieth century. Some, perhaps, are even being built today in isolated locations there. Log crib barns, especially in Dubois County, Indiana, are discussed in greater detail by Warren Roberts in chapter 2 as relicts of the initial waves of Middle Atlantic settlement.

SCANDINAVIAN LOG BARNS

In a few areas along the northern fringes of the Midwest region, a different range of log barns occurs. These are extensions of the Scandinavian-Finnish settlements which characterize the northcentral parts of the United States. Most of these settlements lie outside our region of interest, but in Chisago County, Minnesota, a large Swedish community evolved in the latter half of the nineteenth century, introducing elongated half-log barns to the Midwest (fig 1.3). These distinctive structures are comprised of two parts—a cow barn and a hay storage facility joined together side by side (A:son-Palmqvist 1983). Typical dimensions are twenty-seven to twenty-eight feet wide and sixty to sixty-two feet long, with the hay barn occupying somewhat more than half of the total area of the building. The cow barn, divided into stalls and calving pens, is essentially separate from the other part of the barn, connected through an interior partition by a single small door.

Fig. 1.3. Swedish barn, Chisago County, Minnesota

Sketch: M. Margaret Geib

The cow barn section of the building is typically constructed of tightly fitted hewn logs, or occasionally of field stone. The hay storage part of the barn consists of a timber frame covered by vertical boards or planks. Each gable also is covered by vertical planks. The roof frame, extending across the entire building as a single unified structure, is of timber and was originally sheathed by wooden shakes. Many of these original roofs now have been replaced by asphalt composition shingles and other modern materials.

The Swedish settlement of Chisago County is an excellent example, not just of Scandinavian settlements, but of many other immigrant groups who transferred their traditional building forms from Europe to the Midwest, and established a unique ethnic landscape. Elsewhere in the Midwest, distinctive traditional barns have been described for several important but scattered communities, including Czechs in southeastern South Dakota (Rau 1992), Waloonian Belgians in Door County, Wisconsin (Laatsch and Calkins 1992), Dutch in southwestern Michigan (Durand 1951), and Welsh in Allen County, western Ohio (Brown 1989). Dozens of other immigrant communities still await documentation of their particular types of barns.

TRADITIONAL TIMBER-FRAME BARNS

At a much different scale are the German and English groups. These two peoples came in such numbers that they left their clear imprint over vast sections of the Midwest. Furthermore, they came not only as immigrant groups directly from Europe, but also as descendants of earlier settlers who had established themselves in eastern seaboard hearths.

The English (Yankee, or New England) stream of migration introduced the three-bay threshing barn (see fig. 3.1 p. 41). The characteristics and influence of this barn in the Midwest are discussed by Charles Calkins and Martin Perkins in chapter 3. Its ancient roots are in both continental Europe and the British Isles. In America, it became the barn of choice among the majority of early settlers. It fit well into the small-scale, mixed agriculture of New Englanders and many from the Middle Atlantic area. Today, these barns survive mostly in the eastern areas of the Midwest, and often where agriculture has not proven to be particularly prosperous, so that more modern and larger replacement barns were never erected. One should not assume, however, that traditional barns were static; they did change in response to altering agricultural and climatic conditions. One such change was the popularization of basement barns, either banked or raised, to supplement and ultimately replace the one-and-a-half story English barn as a more efficient structure.

The basement structures quickly became accepted barn forms in many parts of the Midwest (fig. 1.4). Rueber (1974), notes that such barns were constructed upon commencement of agricultural settlement in Fayette County, Iowa. Durand (1943, 1951) has commented on the structures in Wisconsin and Michigan, and Noble (1977) has documented them across Ohio. Although Ridlen (1972) compared them with German bank barns in Cass County, Indiana, and Hartman (1976) briefly reviewed them as the most common type of timber-framed barn found in Michigan, hardly anyone has examined them in much detail.

Fig. 1.4. Typical raised/basement barn, Crawford County, Ohio.

Photo: A. Noble, February 1991

The three-bay threshing barn was the kind of building that could be relatively easily adapted when substituting plank or balloon framing for its orginal, hand-hewn, heavy frame, by raising and extending it, or by adding a new kind of roof because of its full-frame construction. All of these changes happened to this little, inconspicuous farm building. These processes of change are discussed by Lowell Soike in chapter 5.

The other early stream of migration into the Midwest introduced the German bank barn, originally brought to North America via southeastern Pennsylvania. A more elaborate building than the English three-bay barn, the German bank barn provided for both crop storage and processing on the one hand, and for animal storage on the other (see fig. 4.3 p. 68). Large-scale German settlement ensured that the German barn would be the most popular traditional type of barn in the eastern Midwest. LaRock and Yeck (1956) estimated Wisconsin to have between sixty thousand and seventy thousand banked barns, a majority of which probably were German. Such barns remain widely scattered throughout Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Missouri, and in isolated locations elsewhere. Of course, in the level lands of the interior, banking of this barn was replaced by using an earthen ramp.

Simply because the terrain no longer suited the traditional way of building did not automatically mean that the building was altered accordingly. In general, human culture is conservative, and it was especially so among the Germanic settlers from the East. These were not a people inclined to change because it was fashionable. Because the barn has survived in both time and space, it has been possible to trace its diffusion paths out of the Middle Atlantic states into the Midwest (Ensminger 1992).

In the prairie grassland sections of the Midwest, especially western Ohio, northcentral Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, a very different traditional German barn survives: these Saxon or North German Plain barns (Noble 1984) took a quite different form from the German bank barn (fig. 1.5). They were squarish in plan and had their doors on the gable wall rather than on the side. They rose only a single story above the ground and were generally smaller than the bank barns. Both of these German-derived barns are discussed further by Hubert Wilhelm under the rubric of Germanic traditions in chapter 4.

MIDWESTERN AGRICULTURE

Several types of farming operate in the Middle West and each dominates in particular sections of the larger region (fig. 1.6). Along the windward shores of Lakes Michigan and Erie, where specialized fruit farming predominates, the farm buildings are uniformly small. If a barn is present on the farmstead it is often non-descript and used merely for machinery or equipment storage. Barns in these areas do not have the visual impact characteristic of other areas. In any event, these areas do not make up a very large segment of the Midwest.

Fig. 1.5. Typical Saxon or North German plain barn, Dallas County, Iowa.

Photo: A. Noble, October 1984

Fig. 1.6. The Midwest: Types of farming

A much larger area is given over to dairying. Located in three separate sections—southern Minnesota/Wisconsin, southern Michigan, and eastern Ohio—farm barns are larger, with the more recently built barns scattered throughout the dairy farming area. Although many basement barns and German bank barns characterize the dairy belt, the most typical farm building is the large barn called the Wisconsin dairy barn. Ingolf Vogeler discusses, in chapter 6, the evolution of the specialized function of dairying and the various barns associated therewith.

Another widespread, but even more specialized, type of agriculture is the cultivation of tobacco. Much of this occurs along the southern margins of the Midwest, but certain localized occurrences such as in Dane County, Wisconsin, and Darke County, Ohio, have persisted from the nineteenth century. In many areas, tobacco cultivation has been on the decline for some time. Hence, tobacco barns are steadily becoming obsolete structures, and they may have been converted to other agricultural uses. The tobacco barn as an element of midwestern agriculture is discussed in chapter 7 by Karl Raitz.

The largest part of midwestern farmland is devoted to raising field crops, such as wheat, corn and soybeans, sold as cash crops or used as animal feed. Within this area, the raising of livestock also has been historically important, although not as significant today as formerly. A liberal scattering of traditional barns remains throughout these crop areas, especially toward the East, but the dominant type of barn is one of lighter frame, dimension lumber or sawn planks. Often called feeder barns, they are normally smaller than the traditional barns and usually have gambrel or gothic roofing systems rather than gable. Lowell Soike in chapter 8 traces the popularization of these barns as midwestern agricultural prosperity was realized in the latter part of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth century.

Throughout this grain belt the constant demand was for more and better facilities to store the field crops produced in ever larger quantities. Specialized structures, first as extensions of barns, and later as replacements for some of the storage and processing functions of the barn, were needed. Corncribs and granaries, often combined in the same building, came to be as characteristic of the midwestern farmstead as the barn itself. In McLean County, Illinois, as late as 1975, a survey counted corncribs on 192 of 200 farmsteads (Kruckman and Whiteman 1975). On some farms, the corncrib grew to enormous size, larger even than the barn or the house (fig. 1.7). All this was a reflection of the great productivity of most midwestern soils. The development of corncribs, corn-processing systems, granaries, and grain elevators as western extensions of the basic midwestern barn is discussed in chapter 9 by Keith Roe.

BARN ADDITIONS AND EXTENSIONS

Another consequence of growing agricultural productivity was that many barns were expanded, sometimes more than once. Sheds were added to one or both gable walls and the barn’s main roof line was extended to incorporate a rear addition. Some German bank barns had the open areas beneath their forebays enclosed. A common modification was the addition of a large straw shed at right angles to the main barn. As herds grew, the shed housed more straw for bedding and additional hay for feed. The basement of the straw shed also could house additional cows.

Fig. 1.7. Masonry corn crib in Guthrie County, Iowa. Note how its size compares with that of the house.

Photo: A. Noble, October 1984

In Fulton County, Ohio, barn expansion followed a different direction. Here, a second barn with the same dimensions and orientation as the original barn was erected beside the earlier one (fig. 1.8), and sometimes an intervening structure was built to connect the two. These twin barns, a distinctive feature of Fulton County since just after the turn of the century, did not spread much beyond the county boundaries.

THE MODERNIZATION OF MIDWESTERN BARNS

As the proliferation of grain storage facilities demonstrates, barn functions constantly have changed. Farmers were steadily searching for different solutions as they encountered new problems in the evolving agricultural systems of the Midwest. Some attempted to introduce innovative forms and materials for their barns. The use of lighter frames and preformed trusses was one important innovation. Of less permanent impact, but no less interesting, was the flirtation of many farmers and builders with nonorthogonal plans. Keith Sculle and H. Wayne Price, in chapter 10, look at these curiosities for what they tell us about the revolutionary ideas permeating midwestern agriculture in the mid-nineteenth century. Round barns, or those of six or eight sides, were touted as scientific and hence modern. For a variety of reasons, explored by Sculle and Price, these innovative designs were ultimately rejected by midwestern farmers. Modernization took other directions.

Fig. 1.8. Example of a twinned barn, Fulton County, Ohio. Note the elaborate door decoration.

Photo: A. Noble, March 1992

One such direction was simply to replace a traditional barn roof with its heavy timber frame with a more commodious, lighter-framed structure. The visual change was usually that from gable roof to gambrel roof. Other new construction materials also began to be used. Concrete was favored over the earlier stone, brick or wood, for floors and foundation.

Changes in sanitation laws and attitudes, improvements in barn equipment, and enforcement of building codes had an impact on barn design. Increased mechanization radically changed the function of barns. Changes in farming practices, such as the adoption of baled and rolled hay, also contributed to modifications. Finally, barns of a radical new design appeared after World War II. The processes of modernization which brought about all these changes are examined by Glenn Harper and Steve Gordon in chapter 11.

Despite the changes in barn design, certain minor features seemed to persist and to be incorporated in newer barns. Perhaps this reflected the farmers’ desire to hold onto some traditions, even as the new replaced the old in larger aspects of barn design. Of course, as Harper and Gordon point out, not all farmers rushed to adopt the new. Such conservatism is clearly seen among the Amish, who still erect barns, for the most part, according to their time-honored traditions.

MINOR ARCHITECTURAL FEATURES

A feature found on some barns in the eastern Midwest is the entry porch (fig. 1.9). It appears on a wide variety of barn types and does not seem to be associated with any particular ethnic group. Probably introduced