Round barn - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

A round barn is a historic barn design that could be octagonal, polygonal, or circular in plan. Though round barns were not as popular as some other barn designs, their unique shape makes them noticeable. The years from 1880–1920 represent the height of round barn construction. Round barn construction in the United States can be divided into two distinct eras. The first, the octagonal era, spanned from 1850–1900. The second era, known as the true circular era, spanned from 1889–1936. The overlap meant that round barns of both types, polygonal and circular, were built during the period that round barns were popular in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. Numerous round barns in the United States are listed on the National Register of Historic Places

National Register of Historic Places

The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...

History

Round barns date to the late 18th and early 19th century. George Washington

George Washington

George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...

owned a sixteen-sided threshing barn that he designed himself in 1793. Built at his Dogue Run Farm in Fairfax County, Virginia

Fairfax County, Virginia

Fairfax County is a county in Virginia, in the United States. Per the 2010 Census, the population of the county is 1,081,726, making it the most populous jurisdiction in the Commonwealth of Virginia, with 13.5% of Virginia's population...

it is regarded as the first American round barn. Early round barns were particularly associated with the Shaker

Shakers

The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, known as the Shakers, is a religious sect originally thought to be a development of the Religious Society of Friends...

community, one was constructed in 1826 at just such a community in Hancock, Massachusetts

Hancock, Massachusetts

Hancock is a town in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. It is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 717 at the 2010 census.- History :...

. Outside of Hancock and Mount Vernon, a few scattered round barns appeared on the American landscape before the Civil War.

Despite considerable publicity of the 1826 round barn in Massachusetts, the design was not popularized until the 1880s. During this time period agricultural colleges began to push the design as they taught progressive farming methods, based on the principles of industrial efficiency. It was from 1880–1920 that round barns began were the most popular in the United States, especially in the Midwest.

The rise in popularity and the promotion of round barns occurred surrounding the new focus on efficiency. The circular shape has a greater volume-to-surface ratio than a square shaped barn. Regardless of size, this made round barns cheaper to construct than similar sized square or rectangular barns because they required less materials. The structural stability is also enhanced over that of a typical quadrilateral

Quadrilateral

In Euclidean plane geometry, a quadrilateral is a polygon with four sides and four vertices or corners. Sometimes, the term quadrangle is used, by analogy with triangle, and sometimes tetragon for consistency with pentagon , hexagon and so on...

ly shaped barn. Simplified construction lacking elaborate truss

Truss

In architecture and structural engineering, a truss is a structure comprising one or more triangular units constructed with straight members whose ends are connected at joints referred to as nodes. External forces and reactions to those forces are considered to act only at the nodes and result in...

systems for the arched roof was also seen as an advantage. In the Midwest, particularly, the buildings were thought more resilient against prairie thunderstorms. The interior layout of round barns was, at the time, promoted as more efficient, since farmers could work in a continuous direction.
In the days before mechanization, labor-saving features were a big selling point.

The interest in round barns spread to California in the later 19th century and a number were built there. Santa Rosa, California

Santa Rosa, California

Santa Rosa is the county seat of Sonoma County, California, United States. The 2010 census reported a population of 167,815. Santa Rosa is the largest city in California's Wine Country and fifth largest city in the San Francisco Bay Area, after San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland, and Fremont and 26th...

is home to two well-preserved and well-known round barns. One, the Fountain Grove Round Barn, is located on land that was part of the Fountain Grove spiritual commune, the Brotherhood of New Life, founded by Thomas Lake Harris

Thomas Lake Harris

Thomas Lake Harris was an American mystic, spiritualistic prophet and poet.-Early life:Harris was born at Fenny Stratford in Buckinghamshire, England. His parents were Calvinistic Baptists, and very poor. They settled at Utica, New York, when Harris was five years old...

around 1875. Built near the end of the 19th century, it was part of the Fountaingrove winery owned by Harris's protege, Kanawe Nagasawa, who reportedly designed the structure. Another survivor is the De Turk Round Barn on Donahue Street, and was built in the late 1870s by local settler and businessman Isaac De Turk.

Claims of round barn efficiency were overstated. The round barn never caught on as a standard barn, as some of those pushing the progressive, efficiency-based agricultural methods had hoped. The spread of machinery, especially with the Rural Electrification

Rural electrification

Rural electrification is the process of bringing electrical power to rural and remote areas. Electricity is used not only for lighting and household purposes, but it also allows for mechanization of many farming operations, such as threshing, milking, and hoisting grain for storage; in areas...

program, eliminated the advantages of labor-saving designs that were more complicated to build, and the popularity of round barns faded. Regardless, numerous round barns were constructed during the period of popularity the design enjoyed, and a large number still stand today.

Octagonal

The "Octagonal Era" of round barn design stretched from about 1850 until 1900. Round barns, such as Washington's, were often multi sided in their earliest incarnations. Multi-sided round barns came in a variety of polygonal shapes, including six, eight, nine, ten, twelve, fourteen and sixteen sided. Polygonal barns constructed before the advent of balloon framing tended to have interior spaces that were more rectangular than circular.

True circular

The "True Circular Era" of round barn construction spanned from 1889–1936, overlapping the octagonal era and finally dwindling out as round barns fell out of popularity. True circular round barns began to rise as improvements in construction techniques made their design more practical. As balloon framing, circular silo

Storage silo

A silo is a structure for storing bulk materials. Silos are used in agriculture to store grain or fermented feed known as silage. Silos are more commonly used for bulk storage of grain, coal, cement, carbon black, woodchips, food products and sawdust. Three types of silos are in widespread use...

s and truly self-supporting roofs were developed circular barns superseded polygonal structures and began to be built more and more. Despite the gains in popularity for circular barns, polygonal barns continued to be built up through the height of the True Circular Era.

End of an era

By the 1920s round barn construction had begun to decline in some locations. In Illinois the popularity behind round barns, in part due to the University of Illinois round barns

University of Illinois round barns

The three University of Illinois round barns played a special role in the promotion and popularity of the American round barn. They are located in the U.S. city of Urbana, Illinois on the campus of the University of Illinois . The University of Illinois was home to one of the Agricultural...

, and round barn construction had tapered off considerably. Several reasons have been given for the decline in the popularity of round barn designs. The standardization of the construction industry and the resulting decline in timber framing following the American Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

is one possible reason. Another possibility is that the mechanization of American agriculture

Agriculture

Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...

was more suited to rectangular barn design.

Design

Designed in a distinctive circular shape, these barns were meant to take advantage of gravity to move hay from the loft

Loft

A loft can be an upper story or attic in a building, directly under the roof. Alternatively, a loft apartment refers to large adaptable open space, often converted for residential use from some other use, often light industrial...

to the cow stable

Stable

A stable is a building in which livestock, especially horses, are kept. It most commonly means a building that is divided into separate stalls for individual animals...

below. In many cases, a silo

Storage silo

was constructed to rise up through the round barn's center. A labor saving design, the round barn was promoted, for a time, by agricultural colleges as a progressive way to house dairy cattle

Dairy cattle

Dairy cattle are cattle cows bred for the ability to produce large quantities of milk, from which dairy products are made. Dairy cows generally are of the species Bos taurus....

.

The earliest of the round barns tend to have multiple sides, twelve or sixteen. They also tend to be wood

Wood

Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue found in many trees. It has been used for hundreds of thousands of years for both fuel and as a construction material. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression...

sided while the later round barns are more often brick

Brick

A brick is a block of ceramic material used in masonry construction, usually laid using various kinds of mortar. It has been regarded as one of the longest lasting and strongest building materials used throughout history.-History:...

or glazed

Ceramic glaze

Glaze is a layer or coating of a vitreous substance which has been fired to fuse to a ceramic object to color, decorate, strengthen or waterproof it.-Use:...

tile

Tile

A tile is a manufactured piece of hard-wearing material such as ceramic, stone, metal, or even glass. Tiles are generally used for covering roofs, floors, walls, showers, or other objects such as tabletops...

sided. The interior design of round barns shifted as well. The early round barns had cattle stanchions on the first floor with the whole of the loft used for hay and feed storage. As design progressed later barns possessed a central space which rose up from the ground level through the entire building. The cattle stanchion

Stanchion

A stanchion is an upright bar or post, often providing support for some other object.* An architectural term applied to the upright iron bars in windows that pass through the eyes of the saddle bars or horizontal irons to steady the leadlight. A stanchion is an upright bar or post, often...

s in this variation of round barn were arranged around a circular manger

Manger

A manger is a trough or box of carved stone or wood construction used to hold food for animals . Mangers are mostly used in livestock raising. They are also used to feed wild animals, e.g., in nature reserves...

on the lower level. Above the stanchion level a circular wagon drive allowed hay to be loaded and unloaded into the central mow as the wagon circled the perimeter. The final stage of interior design in round barns included a silo

Storage silo

through the center of the structures. These were not really added until silos became fixtures of American farms. Sometimes the central silo would project up through the roof.

Influences

It is known that prominent agricultural colleges began to promote the design technique as round barns came to prominence. However, the provider of the initial impetus is the subject of some debate. In 1848 Orson Fowler published A Home For All: Of the Gravel Wall and Octagon Mode of Building, extolling the virtues of the octagonal shape in home construction. The book included a discussion on use of the shape in barns and other outbuildings. The book lit off a flurry of octagonal home construction, especially in the New England

New England

New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...

and Middle Atlantic states. Some researchers have linked the earliest round barn constructions with Fowler's popular book because so many of the early round barns assumed the octagonal shape.

Other historians discount Fowler's influence on the beginning of the round barn era in the United States. Lowell J. Soike asserts that Fowler did not have any direct connection with any octagonal round barns. He also pointed out that the octagon had ceased to be the basis for building constructions by the Civil War. In Indiana

Indiana

Indiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...

, for example, 219 round barns were constructed between 1850 and 1936; of those 67 were polygonal, including 17 eight-sided barns built after 1900.

In the Midwest, especially in Illinois, the round barns at the University of Illinois

University of Illinois round barns

led to an increase in the style's popularity statewide. This was due, in part, to the access to audience that the U of I's Agricultural Experiment Station has through the publication of regular "Bulletins". The Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin coupled with an article by H.C. Crouch touting round barns in the Illinois Agriculturalist led to the construction of round barns across the state. Anecdotal evidence

Anecdotal evidence

The expression anecdotal evidence refers to evidence from anecdotes. Because of the small sample, there is a larger chance that it may be true but unreliable due to cherry-picked or otherwise unrepresentative of typical cases....

of the impact of the University of Illinois round barns can be collected from farmers today. Stories about fathers and grandfathers recollect round barns being constructed on account of what was going on "over at the University".

External links

Efficiency of the Round barn: Kansas State Board of Agriculture, Eighteenth Biennial Report, 1911–12, pp. 139–42.
Shaker Round Barn: Official site
Sleuthing for Clues: article covering reconstruction effort of Washington's round barn. Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens. http://www.mountvernon.org/

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

History

Octagonal

True circular

End of an era

Design

Influences

See also

External links