There are several
major North American barn types and most of these have
representative examples that date to before 1800. Most
however date after this time era. At least two barn
types apparently have origins that date back to the
first half of the seventeenth century in North America.
All the barns are gable roof ended. The major barns
are described below.
This barn is of one level
only and has a main side wall wagon entry. The classic
or earliest type is often close to 30 feet by 40 feet
but variations in dimensions exist. This barn design
was borrowed from England and early or pre 1800 barns
utilize true upper transverse tie beams in association
with gun-stocked wall posts. After about 1800 dropped
tie beams were used. Pre 1750 examples are extremely
rare. Barns of the post 1830 era are much more common.
Barns of this ethnic type can have either common rafter
systems or principal rafter systems. Barns in cultural
areas include much or most of New England, eastern edges
of New York State, all of Orange County New York, certain
diverse areas of New Jersey and English settled areas
south of Pennsylvania.
This barn may be a lone standing building or may be
found joined to other homestead farm buildings known
as connected architecture. The New England barn has
an end wall wagon entry which is quite often un-centered
on the wall. Almost all of these barns are found in
New England states especially in Maine and New Hampshire
and scattered elsewhere. Most of these distinctive barns
were built after 1830. Some of these barns attain very
large dimensions.
This barn is not to be confused with the barn type that
is quite often called the Pennsylvania Dutch (fore-bay)
barn which is not of Holland Dutch type but is German
in origin.
The true Dutch barn was built
as early as the 1630’s as surviving contracts
attest to. In the first half of the 1600’s both
combination house-barns or loshoes and pure form barns
were constructed. The earliest scientifically authenticated
example by means of dendro-chronology is the 1726 William
Bull barn in Orange County. A few other examples built
prior to 1760 survive. Existing barns built after about
1790 are much more plentiful. Dutch barns appear in
the major eastern river valleys in New York State in
twenty counties and in ten counties in the northern
half of New Jersey and very rarely anywhere else. Derivative
type and/or hybrid type barns were erected as late as
1880. About 750 barns or barn remnants remain.
The Dutch barn may appear (most often) as a three-aisle
structure and occasionally as a one-aisle building.
The Dutch barn is most often of one floor level and
without any basement. The wagon entry appears on the
end or gable wall and occasionally on the side wall
in certain post 1810 barns that were erected as hybrids
types. Internally the major support structure consists
of a series of transverse H-frames where the posts are
placed about ten feet from the side walls. Cows were
stabled at one side aisle and horses on the other side
aisle. Threshing was done on the nave or middle-aisle
floor. Most barns are either 3 or 4-bay structures but
a few 2-bay barns and perhaps 25 five-bay and about
a half dozen 6-bay barns are also known. One seven-bay
barn and one eight-bay barn have been discovered.
Some
of the earliest Germanic barns are of one-level ground
type. The first ones were made of log, later ones were
often made of stone, and certain nineteenth century
ones were made of frame.
There are a number of variations of this barn type that
appear and there are no known European prototypes. Thus
it seems that the barn is an American invention by eighteenth
century timber framers. They are either three or four-bay
structures and either two-level banked structures or
one-level ground barns. The earliest ones are of one
level. The earliest known barns may have been built
about the year 1760 but earlier examples might have
been constructed.
A swing beam barn is de-noted by the fact that one of
the bents has a very large horizontal beam and is always
adjacent to the wagon or threshing bay. Many swing beams
are 16 to 20 inches thick and one ground barn in west-central
New Jersey has a 26 inch high swing beam. No posts are
ever seen below the beams – that is – they
run free-span the entire widths of the buildings. This
is due to the supposed fact that farm animals were to
roam in certain pre-determined movements unimpeded below
the beams. In certain cases tethered horses or other
stock in swinging around in circular motion below the
beams stomped on various farm produce and effected the
separation of the seed from the chaff of the grains.
Swing beams often appear in later or post 1820 Pennsylvania
barns and pre 1830 ground barns in west-central New
Jersey.
These barns most often of one level regularly appear
in the Schoharie and Mohawk River Valleys in New York
State and in Ontario and other scattered places in the
northeast. The earliest swing beams in barns in Pennsylvania
appear in a dated 1787 stone Switzer in the Oley Valley
in Berks County and in a dated 1785 stone ground barn
of probable English type in northern Bucks County.
It is likely that Pennsylvania barns as a type of barn
have been one of the most studied barn types in North
America. Related to this and the fact that there are
hundreds of thousands of such barns left in North America
a special section is devoted below to delineating the
various traits of these barns.
Pennsylvania
barns are categorized into three classes: Switzer, Standard,
and Extended. Pennsylvania barns are denoted by their
cantilevered fore-bay or projection over the basement
level stable wall and are two-level banked structures.
Switzer barns may have been erected
before about 1750 but were commonly built in the 1780
to 1810 era and in certain areas one to three decades
beyond this time. In certain areas such as the Mahantango
Valley above Harrisburg, Switzers were erected into
the 1830s and 1840s. Switzers have asymmetrical roofs,
where the distinctive appendage-like fore-bay at the
barn front creates the roof asymmetry. With no detailed
explanations provided, four types of barns comprise
the Switzer class. Basically, the specific types in
this barn class depend on the inspection of construction
materials and internal morphology.
Standard barns are characterized by
symmetrical rooflines. These barns were first constructed
in the 1790s, but were far more commonly erected after
about 1820 and then up until the late nineteenth century
and somewhat beyond. The width of fore-bays in Standard
barns is quite often about four feet but can measure
up to 6 to 8 feet or even more, depending on the specific
barn and barn sub-class. Unlike in the Switzer class
barns the transverse framing units or bents are contained
within the front fore-bay area of the barn. Ten types
of barns comprise the full Standard class. Over time,
varying characteristics of the types depend on the depth
of the forebay, the method of forebay reinforcement
and other morphological variations.
Extended barns are those Pennsylvania
barns that have been enlarged by amending or extending
the barn beyond the basic Switzer and Standard framing
limits. Many of these extended barns are seen in southeast
Pennsylvania but the front extended barn sections were
additions. Five types of barns comprise the Extended
class.
English Lake District barns
This barn type does not fall into the category of a
Pennsylvania barn class. It is, however, a very rare
barn type in the greater Lehigh River and Saucon Creek
Valleys north of Philadelphia by a few dozen miles.
In the more southern English counties near Philadelphia
– southern Bucks and Montgomery, Chester and Delaware
Counties these barns are far more prevalent. These are
banked two level structures, consisting of a basement
and an upper floor or loft level without any fore-bay.
The upper level can be either stone (most often) or
frame (rather rare). The greatest difference between
these barns and Pennsylvania barns is that the front
wall in most English type barns are all stone on the
front wall from the ground to the top of the second
story. In addition, there is a short roof projection
at the top of the stone basement wall at the barn front
that is called a pent roof. It extends across nearly
the entire full length of the barn. The pent roof protects
the stable wall doors. Many such barns with the same
basic appearance are seen in the northwest lake area
of England where the barn concept likely originated.
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