The aging structures are being converted into homes and offices

Saturday, January 10, 2004

By Gretchen McKay, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Builder Todd Rossman has fielded plenty of strange requests over the past 14 years to build that perfect, one-of-a-kind custom home. None, however, was as odd as one by a couple transferring here from Connecticut in early 1991.

	In the great room of a century-old reconstructed barn, below, is a massive fireplace made out of stones from the barn's original foundation. (Martha Rial, Post-Gazette) Click photo for larger image. Related Articles Pennsylvania holds a bounty of barns Here is where to find old and new barns

In addition to building an authentic log home on 8 acres off Fox Chapel Road in Fox Chapel, they wanted the Valencia builder to put up a smaller cabin they could live in during construction and later use as a guest house. But they didn't want new construction.

"She says to me, 'Can you find me an old barn and move it to the property and make a guest house out of it?'" recalls Rossman, president of Rossman/Hensley Inc.

These days, the idea is not so crazy as it was then. Across the country, a growing number of aging barns are being converted to homes, shopping centers, restaurants, artists' studios, even office space.

Office cubicles have replaced eight horse stalls that used to house Standardbred yearlings at Lindwood Farm near Greensburg. Twenty feet away, four-legged residents still toss their manes and munch hay in Logan Dickerson's 16-year-old horse barn. Why did the horse breeder and real estate developer decide to convert part of his stables to offices?

"I wanted to be able to walk home for lunch," says Dickerson.

Still, it's one thing to breathe new life into a barn that already sits on your property; it's quite another to go looking for a salvageable 100-year-old structure and move it many miles away. All told, Rossman spent four months scouring the Western Pennsylvania countryside for the right barn. He eventually found one along Route 910 in Pine, next to Gatto Cycle Shop (which, incidentally, is housed in an old barn). Asking price, excluding labor and transportation: $5,000.

Martha Rial, Post-Gazette This barn, now in Fox Chapel, was once located in Pine. The 40-by-60-foot structure was dismantled, moved and transformed into a house. Click photo for larger image.

For help in dismantling and moving the 40- by-60-foot barn, Rossman turned to an Amish work crew from New Wilmington, Lawrence County. It took the group of 12, who arrived each day in a tarp-covered pickup and ranged in age from about 7 to nearly 80, just over a week to take the century-old building apart, load it onto a flatbed and reassemble the carefully numbered timbers on the Fox Chapel site.

And that was just the beginning. Though the barn's basic footprint remained the same, it wasn't really set up for modern-day living. So in addition to cutting off the bottom 2 feet of the main posts, which had rotted, Rossman and partner John Hensley had to create separate living spaces with interior walls and doors. They also had to insulate the 4,000-square-foot structure, add plumbing and electricity, construct a wood-burning fireplace and install new windows and floors.

"We basically built a new house around the old timbers," Rossman says, a process that took close to a year and added up to $550,000, thanks to some pretty hefty site-preparation costs. Luckily, the owners didn't care if the walls and floors were perfectly plumb.

"They wanted warm and fuzzy," says Rossman.

	Sources Barn Again, www.agriculture.com/barnagain The Barn Journal, www.thebarnjournal.org Charles Whitney, barn consultant, 1-740-393-2246; barnconsultant@yahoo.com Country Barns of Pittsburgh, 1601 Bower Hill Road, Scott, 412-221-1630 The Foundation for Historic Building Rescue, www.historicbuildingrescue.org/, Box 158, Harleysville, PA 19438; 1-215-721-4046 Frank Heath, local barn expert, 724-226-2944; bandwagon_@yahoo.com Historic Properties, www.historicproperties.com

Set into the hillside, the two-story bank barn features reverse board-and-batten cedar cladding, a sandstone foundation from Raducz Stone Corp.'s quarry in Butler and a shallow-pitched gable roof. Large sandstone slabs lead to the double-plank front door.

While the rustic-looking posts and beams are held together by wooden pegs and mortise-and-tendon joints, the timbers are sawn and not hand-hewn, dating the barn to some time around the turn of the 20th century. A two-story addition at the rear was added in the mid-1990s by the home's second owners and holds three bedrooms, two baths, a gourmet kitchen and family room.

One of the home's most stunning architectural details is the massive fireplace in the great room. Hand-crafted by Frank Raducz out of stones from the barn's original foundation, it climbs nearly 30 feet to the ceiling and features a 6-by-4-foot firebox, along with a separate box for log storage. A colorful painting of a spear-making ceremony by Aboriginal artist Mitjili Napurrula crowns the hand-hewn log mantel.

The honey-colored antique wide-plank pine flooring, remilled by Aged Woods of York, Pa., is equally spectacular and -- like the exposed wooden beams on the walls and on the ceiling -- adds to the room's warmth and coziness.

While the barn's two lofts would make perfect bedrooms, they were too low to walk under. So workers had to lift the ceilings about 3 feet. They also replaced the long, narrow louvers that formerly brought light and fresh air into the barn with Gothic-inspired windows. A third loft in the rear was turned into a library/office.

One of the renovation's major challenges, says Rossman, was the main bathroom, which features a whirlpool tub between two windows and a walk-in shower. The owner insisted that the red Mexican tile floor include at least one tile with a coyote footprint (created when the animals dash across "green" tiles that have been set outside to dry).

	Among the lighting fixtures in the barn are hand-punched tin lanterns. (Martha Rial, Post-Gazette) Click photo for larger image.

"I spent an entire day at a warehouse looking through boxes," he says with a laugh.

The galley kitchen, tucked under one of the bedroom lofts, has ceramic tile countertops on one side and butcher-block counters on the other. It's brightened by two Gothic-style windows and white-painted plank cabinets that echo the design of the hand-made interior doors.

While the barn section definitely feels rustic, the current owners have resisted the temptation to decorate it cowboy style with twig furniture and animal heads, save for a small set of deer antlers above the kitchen door and a gorgeous wormy chestnut table in the dining room. Many of the furnishings were inspired by the Arts & Crafts movement, such as a pair of mica table lamps on either side of the couch, a reproduction 1910 Prairie-style flat-top oak clock to the right of the fireplace and a Stickley-style leather-topped round table under the library loft.

Other touches evoke a more primitive feeling, like the punched tin lighting fixtures throughout the first floor, the wrought-iron hardware on all the doors and a tree-like wrought-iron coat rack and fireplace set from Iron Eden in the Strip District.

The current owner, who asked not to be identified, says it is a place to get away from the "busy" parts of the house.

"We use this room for refuge," she says.

From stables to offices

Dickerson considers his stables/office a refuge of sorts, too. Made of cedar and stucco, it stands in the middle of several pastures not far from his upscale residential community, Lindwood. The office space was built in a part of the stables that had been used for breeding and foaling and to display the Standardbred yearlings Lindwood Farm had for sale.

V.W.H. Campbell Jr., Post-Gazette "We wanted everything as original as possible," says horse breeder and real estate developer Logan Dickerson of his stables that were converted into offices. Click photo for larger image.

While the dirt and rubber mat floors have been replaced with concrete, the wide concrete band at the front gate -- meant to prevent the horses from digging a hole when they pawed -- is original. So is the brick and concrete floor in the center aisle that now serves as Lindwood Farm's reception area.

"We wanted everything as original as possible," says Dickerson, who worked with architect Mac Irwin of Pittsburgh on the conversion.

The rubber feeding buckets that once held oats are long gone, but each of the offices still boasts its original sliding oak door with gleaming stainless steel grillage. The bronze coach lights outside each office are also original, along with the wooden halter rests on the door fronts.

The offices are also the headquarters of Protos Foods, a Dickerson company that markets Ostrim meat sticks, a low-fat, high-protein meat stick made from ostrich and beef. The offices lead directly into the formal stables, which today hold 13 stalls and are home to four world champion Standardbred stallions.

It's not unusual to want a building that combines all of his interests, Dickerson says.

"We just did it in a unique away."

Gretchen McKay covers homes and real estate for the Post-Gazette. She can be reached at gmckay@post-gazette.com or 412-761-4670.

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