Newtown’s Barns –– Survivors Of A Past Way Of Life

By Dottie Evans

Here’s the thing about an old barn.

There it is; but nobody really sees it.

––Dan Amaral

If you want to rediscover Newtown’s rural past, drive slowly down any town road that is not part of a newly built subdivision and look for the older homes. Behind the tall hedges or tucked into back yards beneath mature trees, you might catch a glimpse of those solitary structures that were once the heart and soul of this place –– the old barns.

Unfortunately, one-fourth of the barns listed in the 1997 Field Guide To New England Barns and Farm Buildings are now gone. Newtown barns may be disappearing at the same rate, though we would like to believe otherwise.

If they have not been bulldozed for development or stripped for their beautiful, weathered wood, old barns are being remodeled to create picturesque homes.

Or they are replicated. New barns built from scratch to look old. An August 2005 New York Times article mentions that faux barns are rising as fast as McMansions along Connecticut’s Gold Coast where the vintage look of an “old barn” on a newly landscaped property adds the desired historical touch.

Meanwhile, where people live in more modest circumstances, many antique New England barns that have outlasted generations of owners are gradually disappearing. Victims of benign neglect, they are falling down under their own weight after the leaky roof and sagging rafters lose the battle with gravity.

Warren resident Eric Sloane was a painter, philosopher, and chronicler of early American farm life. Before he died in 1985, he wrote about old barns in lyrical terms in his illustrated book, An Age Of Barns.

“Although a 19th Century man might have been a doctor or a printer or a lawyer by profession,” Mr Sloane wrote, “he was also, of necessity, a farmer. His barn was a structure totally appropriate to its time and place. Now…130 years since we began changing from an agricultural to and industrial economy, the need for these old barns is past.”

In the best possible scenario, an old barn finds new life when its owner appreciates the craftsmanship of its construction and the integrity of form following function.

Town Historian Dan Cruson has the highest praise for Newtown’s oldest barns, most of which are lovingly cared for by residents who value and use them in their everyday lives.

“They are truly marvelous, the earliest having post and beam construction. They are equally hard to date, since as the years went by there was a constant process of change, additions, and renovations underway according to the farmer’s needs.”

 

From Barley To Dairy

 Centuries ago in England, a barn was a covered hole in the ground to story barley. By 1700, when the earliest Connecticut colonists moved inland from the coast to settle Newtown, sturdy structures were needed to store grain and shield horses and oxen against hard winters. The Yankee barn was born.

 Early American barns were set on solid fieldstone foundations and sited on the land to take the best advantage of a sloping bank or sheltering hillside. While the ground floor was built to house livestock, an upper threshing floor featured sliding doors on both sides allowing the wind to blow through and sweep away the chaff.

As agricultural industry increased, the outbuildings multiplied. Granaries, corn cribs, sugar houses, smoke houses, and icehouses were added. Many structures were interconnected to allow the farmer access in bad weather.

The onset of dairy farming after 1866 meant a large herd of cows needed to be fed and kept warm throughout the winter. Compact Yankee barns had to be transformed to accommodate more hay, either through the addition of another floor or ballooning out of the roof into the gambrel shape made popular in Pennsylvania. After 1870, silos were added for grain storage.

Stone barns were built at the end of the 19th Century when wood was scarce (due to charcoal making for the iron foundries) and where skilled labor was available. A sad loss occurred in Newtown on January 2004 on Boggs Hill Road when a handsome stone barn once owned by the Chase family was bulldozed for a development.

Longtime Newtown resident Dan Amaral may have commented that nobody really sees old barns, but the outcry that followed the destruction of the Chase stone barn on Boggs Hill Road showed that Newtowners do take notice when the old barns disappear from the landscape, and many mourn their passing.