Barns Around Iowa

This book includes over 175 photographs covering twenty rural cities and eight different counties together with the first-ever Amana Colonies barn tour. Many different types of barns are displayed such as: octagonal, hexagonal, Pennsylvania, monitor, gambrel, and gable.--Back cover.

Originally there were approximately 200,000 barns built in Iowa. Now it is estimated that only 60,000 barns remain, with another 1,000 or more barns disappearing from Iowa's landscape annually. This book preserves in print Eastern Iowa's historic barns built from 1839 to 1955 with over 175 photographs from the author's research, the first ever Amana Colonies barn tour, the Johnson County Historical Society barn tour, and the Iowa Barn Foundation's annual barn tour. Eight Iowa counties and 20 rural cities are covered. Former president Hoover was living as a youth five miles from one of the featured octagonal barns when it was built in 1883. This barn's aesthetic beauty is so inspiring that people from other countries come to visit this barn each year to see the unusual bell shaped roof, a suspended staircase, a railway car, and laminated interior ribs. It may be the only barn built with a bell shaped roof and is thought to be the oldest surviving barn built of it's kind in the U. S.

Luella Hazeltine spent over a decade photographing barns in color. Since then, some are no longer standing, some are restored, and others have new uses. This 6x9" book of 128 pages is in color, county by county.

Includes catalog of 160 round barns in Iowa.

Originally published in 1995, Barns of the Midwest is a masterful example of material cultural history. It arrived at a critical moment for the agricultural landscape. The 1980s were marked by farm foreclosures, rural bank failures, the continued rise of industrialized agriculture, and severe floods and droughts. These waves of disaster hastened the erosion of the idea of a pastoral Heartland knit together with small farms and rural values. And it wasn’t just an idea that was eroded; material artifacts such as the iconic Midwestern barn were also rapidly wearing away. It was against this background that editors Noble and Wilhelm gathered noted experts in history and architecture to write on the nature and meaning of Midwestern barns, explaining why certain barns were built as they were, what types of barns appeared where, and what their functions were. Featuring a new introduction by Timothy G. Anderson, Barns of the Midwest is the definitive work on this ubiquitous but little studied architectural symbol of a region and its history.

In his widely acclaimed The Pennsylvania Barn, Robert Ensminger provided the first comprehensive study of an important piece of American vernacular architecture—the forebay bank barn, better known as the Pennsylvania barn or the Pennsylvania German barn. Now, in this revised edition, Ensminger has continued his diligent fieldwork and archival research into the origins, evolution, and distribution in North America of this significant agricultural structure. Including an entire chapter of new material, 85 new illustrations, and updates to previous chapters, this edition of Ensminger's classic work will appeal to students and scholars in cultural and historical geography, folklore and vernacular architectural history, and American studies, as well as to general readers.

Swedish immigrant farmers who transplanted themselves to the soils of Iowa contributed to a powerful architectural landscape. The barns they built were designed with a combination of practicality and functionality, as well as an identity of individual family roots. Painter Hyatt Moore joined the passion of the University Park Inn and Suites in Ames, Iowa to pay tribute to these monuments of labor and lumber. With over 100 barns, each painted in its own unique style, then with haiku added by the painter, the book is a delight to any fascinated with barn culture, with Iowa landscapes or a colorful and artistic approach to life in general.