Barns

Saddle up, little partner. You're on patrol with the Rocky Mountain Rangers! It's our job to protect Canada's precious mountain parks. We wrangle grizzly bears, rescue stranded hikers, and ride up and down the trails with our horses - it's all in a day's work for a ranger.

Until Jamestown was established, nothing in North America grew taller than the native forests, grasses, and mountains. Beginning in 1620, the settlers who plowed the indigenous sod also dotted the virgin landscapes with towering, stately structures, the likes of which had never before been seen on the continent. This photo/essay treatment of barns in America is arranged by the five distinct roof styles that have largely come to define American barns, presenting six 20-page spreads detailing the Dutch, bank, crib, round, and prairie styles. The result captures the pastiche of rural America through stunning photography, conveying everything from stone barns in hard-scrabble Maine to thoroughbred barns in the lush bluegrass regions, to traditional Gambrel-roofed red barns in the Midwest. Regions represented include New England, the Southeast, the mid-South, the Midwest, the Pacific Northwest, the desert Southwest, and California. There is an in depth examination of how styles developed out of necessity and anecdotes from those who work and live on farms.

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.

Featuring more than 100 stunning full-color photographs along with helpful diagrams and historic photos, Barns of Connecticut captures both the iconic and the unique, including historic and noteworthy barns. The book discusses the importance of barns to Connecticut agriculture across our state and up to the present day. Markham Starr’s Barns of Connecticut offers a lovely introduction to the architectural, functional, and agricultural roles these structures played in early Connecticut. Through text and color photographs, it tells a story of change and continuity. From the earliest colonial structures to the low steel buildings of modern dairy farms, barns have adapted to meet the needs of each generation; they’ve stored wheat, hay, and tobacco, and housed farm animals and dairy cows. These enduring structures display the optimism, ingenuity, hard work, and practicality of the people who tend land and livestock throughout the state.

Barns of New York explores and celebrates the agricultural and architectural diversity of the Empire State—from Long Island to Lake Erie, the Southern Tier to the North Country—providing a unique compendium of the vernacular architecture of rural New York. Through descriptions of the appearance and working of representative historic farm buildings, Barns of New York also serves as an authoritative reference for historic preservation efforts across the state. Cynthia G. Falk connects agricultural buildings—both extant examples and those long gone—with the products and processes they made and make possible. Great attention is paid not only to main barns but also to agricultural outbuildings such as chicken coops, smokehouses, and windmills. Falk further emphasizes the types of buildings used to support the cultivation of products specifically associated with the Empire State, including hops, apples, cheese, and maple syrup. Enhanced by more than two hundred contemporary and historic photographs and other images, this book provides historical, cultural, and economic context for understanding the rural landscape. In an appendix are lists of historic farm buildings open to the public at living history museums and historic sites. Through a greater awareness of the buildings found on farms throughout New York, readers will come away with an increased appreciation for the state’s rich agricultural and architectural legacy.