Saturday, January 10, 2004

By Gretchen McKay, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Thanks to our agricultural heritage, one of the most ubiquitous structures in rural Pennsylvania is the barn.

But barns aren't all the same. The ethnic groups who settled here constructed the same types of barns they had back home. So German and Swiss immigrants, for instance, built forebay barns, with an overhanging second level on one or more sides, while the English and Scottish favored three-bay threshing barns and bank barns built into a hillside, with the lower level used to house animals.

The most common barn in Western Pennsylvania, according to local barn expert Frank Heath of Natrona Heights, is the forebay bank barn, also known as the Pennsylvania barn. The upper floor was used for storing grain and hay, while the lower level -- protected from the weather by the cantilevered overhang -- housed the animals.

"You could take the grain wagon right in and throw stuff down the stairs to the cows," says Heath, who occasionally leads tours of local barns and has produced the video "Pennsylvania Barns: A Detective Story" ($20) based on his research.

A region's topography also influenced building style and farm layout, says Heath. Fieldstone was often used in the eastern part of the state, brick in the central region and timber-frame barns in Western Pennsylvania.

So who built that barn you pass every day on your way to work, and when? Perhaps more important, is it worth saving?

For around $200, Ohio-based barn consultant Charles Whitney will age a barn within 10 years, identify the style and type of wood and tell you what kind of repairs are needed. The retired builder, who has researched 500 barns all over the country in the past five years, will even help you find someone who will do the work right -- which is no small thing.

Interest in old barns is at a peak right now, says Whitney, who also publishes The Barn Consultant, a bi-monthly news-letter devoted to barns. Despite the interest, barns continue to disappear all over the country to make way for development.

"From a technical standpoint, they're icons of history," says Whitney. "A lot of these barns were built in the early 1800s from timbers cut from trees that started growing in the 1600s and early 1700s."

Robert Ensminger, author of "The Pennsylvania Barn: Its Origin, Evolution, and Distribution in North America" (Johns Hopkins University Press, $28), also has seen a growing interest in barn preservation.

"They're almost a monument to the agricultural industry," he says, noting that examples of our namesake barn go back as far as 250 years and have spread as far as Wisconsin and Canada.

While many of the oldest barns are in the eastern and central parts of the state, where there was more good farmland, Western Pennsylvania still boasts a fair number of old barns. Typically constructed on a heavy frame of hewn timbers, they're incredibly strong.

"If they're maintained, they'll last forever," says Ensminger.

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