Historic and Significant Barn

Today I surveyed a very interesting barn, one that is historic as representing the earliest settlement of its particular region (southern Cass County Indiana) and one that is significant as an excellent example of its style -the Pennsylvania Barn as it is called here, also known as the forebay barn, Schweizer Barn, or Swiss Barn. But this one is remarkable for its size -all such barns built in this region tend to be very large, but this one stands out above the rest. Especially of note is its 2 threshing floors or drive bays -there is an entire extra bent in this barn from what is normal. In addition, the frame profile is rather different from other such barns I have surveyed in this area.

Forebay barns tend to be the oldest barns in our region, built during the early period of settlement when suitably large and tall trees were plentiful. It was replaced by smaller, simpler box frame barns, especially as farming became more focused on livestock. The timber frame barn in our region died out in the 1950's and 1960's, when farming shifted toward field crops and the old timber barns were rendered obsolete.

In addition, these barns tend to represent the settlement of the Amish and Dunkards who settled in Howard, Miami, Cass, and Carroll counties in the 1840's and 1850's

This particular barn, I would guess, represents the period spanning between 1850 and 1880, most likely being built in the 60's or 70's. All timber, even braces and girts, are hand hewn (the braces, as is typical of the region, are then planed. I have never understood this practice and would appreciate any explanation) meaning it cannot have been built much later than about 1875 when sawmills were common in the region.

What astounds me the most about this barn is, as mentioned, the daouble drive bay configuration. I am somewhat at a loss to think how this could even have been overly beneficial?

THis barn is exceptional because, although having a few minor modifications and having all fir siding instead of the original oak plank siding, it is incredibly well preserved, including its shallow roof (about a 10/12 slope, most barns having been increased to a 12/12 at a later date or receiving a gambrel roof) There is some rot, but this is confined almost exclusively to the sills under the drive doors. I was stunned, actually, at how well preserved this barn is. Even the stone wall under the drive ramp in the stall area is in surprisingly good shape.

Now, here is what you all really want, pictures (I mean, how many of you actually even bothered to read all of that?)



First are a few pictures of the exterior. When I first saw this while driving down the road, I was worried...

But then I stepped into the lower level:


There were some unused log sleepers sitting on the ground, though the show signs of having once been used. I believe these previously spanned the beams above the threshing floors.

Upstairs, the framing is in almost immaculate condition...



Overall, this is one of the most spectacular barns I have ever surveyed.

The owner wants me to give him a price for it. In other words, this barn is going to come down. I'd like to find someone to sell the frame to or, if I must, split it two frames (it's big enough).

This barn lacks a feature I have seen on most of these barns: the wedged dovetail tenon on the tie beams. I don't quite know what to make of this omission. But obviously the frame has performed quite well relying on pegs...


Note also that on this barn, the tie beams and lower support beams in the middle bents (the lower having previously carried heavy log sleepers and a heavy floor load) span about 20 feet, having not measured anything I also guess the bent spacing to be nearly 20 feet, making for an approximate size of 40x80 feet...

Good find David. in the classification system used by Bob Ensminger, the barn shown here is a Pennsylvania Barn and not a Sweitzer, there are clear differences, in fact they are different categories. The framing layout is clearly from a later era of construction, where economy of construction has simplified the layout to the point where basic concepts of support are lost. On the note of loss, the structural core of older PB's were organized to bear the roof load away from the forebay wall onto the foundation, so the single interior post is an outlier.

Thanks, Roger. I did some more research and found the differences generally distinguishing the two.

I was, however, related the local vernacular which may or may not be 'right'

Please put up some pictures or link to some with examples of earlier PB's. Our Indiana barns are exclusively of the later era of construction. I do not, for example, see the long sill to plate braces in any of these. Though I have observed this in square barns in Tipton and Hamilton Counties (due south of me) where the barns have a side-entry threshing floor that is not centered and opens all the way through the barn.

I do not keep a photo archive, sorry. However the following link contains a schematic of the Sweitzer Barn.

http://www.farmbuildingguide.org/sweitzer.html

Please note, different heights at the ramp and forebay walls and the post over the foundation on the forebay side. Also note the light wall framing in the forebay. At variance from the norm for Sweitzers is the roof slope of about 10/12, the normal Sweitzer slope is 12/12.

A Pennsylvania Barn has same height walls at the forebay and ramps sides. Roof slopes range less than 12/12 perhaps 10/12 to 7/12. Penns use full size timber in the forebay but often have support from the forebay adjacent foundation to pick up roof load.

A complication in barn roadside spotting is that often shed extensions on the ramp side mess with the profile view, so often barns must be seen from different POV's in order to get the right classification.

https://www.google.com/search?q=pennsylv...600&bih=775

A general note on old forebay bank barns, the interior bents often have a very strong truss like layout that relieves load on the forebay walls not just just a posted support to the foundation.

Roger,

We have barns with truss-like wall configurations in some cases, but these are not PA barns.

It all gets complicated very fast with the different settlement patterns, the barns being built reflecting who settled that area, etc.

The area where we find PA style barns was settled by Dunkards and Amish in the 1840's and 1850's. These came largely out of Holmes County Ohio. The areas such as Hamilton County where we find the square barns were settled from Ohio, by a mixture of German Lutheran and Scotch-Irish settlers. The Germans tended to settle in one area and the Scotch-Irish in another, and this is reflected in the barns that still stand. Scotch Irish barns are of the English style, square barns typically not very big with centered side entry doors. German barns are of course of a German style, featuring the long braces extending from sill to plate. They also often have a threshing floor that is more off center, showing a floor plan more reminiscent of a south German or Swiss barn (arranged horse stall, threshing floor, cow stall, with hay stored in a loft above the stalls being thrown up from wagons in the threshing floor aisle)

The PA style barns tends to be the mark of Anabaptist settlement in this region, from my experience all of the barns of this style locally were built either by Amish or Dunkards.

The German barn styles fell out of use by 1900, replaced by the much larger incarnation of the English barn, the more typical Midwestern barn. The layout here is essentially the same as the smaller English barns, just bigger.

Like you mentioned, a lot of barns are obscured by additions or changes. Most barns around here have totally replaced roof structures. Often, the old purlin posts framed an 8 or 10/12 roof. These were removed and replaced by canted posts framing a 12/12 roof. At other times, I have found where short stub posts were added on top of the old purlins to support a new purlin, increasing the roof slope. This is a bad practice, these posts are unstable.
In the early part of the 20th century, very many barns had their original roof totally removed and replaced with gambrel style roofs. Barns built from this period through the 1950's are almost always gambrel roof structures.

At some point, many PA barns had the forebay enclosed, or even were extended out on the forebay side so as to completely obscure this feature. Add to this the fact that there are often a number of barns with ramps to the upper level that are not PA style barns and never were.

In my home area, Somerset Co Pa, the various forebay bank barns are not associated with specific sects but more with a large proportion of the farming community being "Pennsylvania Dutch" or rather German speaking spanning a wide range of faith traditions. Both sides of my family range from Plain Anabaptists to Lutheran. I represent the first generation to grow up off the farm. My grandparents generation thoroughly intermarried, anyhow they all had similar farmsteads. My Lutheran grandmother had a great collection of photos from the turn into the 20th century that documented the Anabaptist communities Love Feast rite that was practiced in an open come one come all manner. My point is a hundred years ago, communities, I think, were far more open and had many forms of exchange.

All of the Anabaptists in Indiana trace back to Somerset County. So I do know a little about it and its history. I have ancestors from that community.

In PA, there was a lot more intermingling then there was in Indiana. People came out here largely to establish their own communities, in a way to get away from everyone else. Amish farmers came to Indiana, for example, to start Amish colonies. In our region there was a very strong distinction between the ethnic communities until maybe 40 years ago, and even now that past leaves its mark. The Lutherans of Western Howard County did not associate with the Scotch Irish to the north and east, the Dunkards and Amish remained in their own communities, etc.

Berne Indiana is a good example of this, where people of Swiss Background -Amish, Mennonite, Reformed- came and established a Swiss settlement that was to be and remains distinct and separate from everyone else around them.

Back to barns,

I measured this barn today. It is, in fact, 40x80 on the upper level, the drive bays being about 20 foot 6 inches wide, and the tie beams in the center bents spanning a full 20 feet.

Posts in the walls are 9x9, the center posts in the center bents are 9x11.
The tie beams are 9x10 to 9x11, the plates and purlins roughly 10x10
The sills of the upper level are nearly 12x12
All timbers in the basement level except the foundation sills are 12x12, the sills are slightly larger.

The spacing of timbers and bents to me seems to be somewhat exceeding good design principles, but it seems top have survived the past 150 years pretty well with most major issues being the result of late 'repairs' like replacing portions of the foundation with concrete, or modifications like cutting out the lower sills to allow entrance of wheeled vehicles or cutting out the girts to add additional doors and windows.

Two of the center bents had their uppermost tie beams cut out to allow a hay claw to move hay from the driving floor into the side lofts. This modification does not seem to have severely compromised the integrity of the structure (doubtless due to the triple tie beam arrangement in the center bents, and the fact that the centermost bent retains its upper tie.)

I inspected another very unique barn today. This barn is very unusual, as it did not begin its life as a barn. It was originally a timber framed house that was later modified to serve as a barn, a more modern solid brick house having been built near it over 100 years ago. The center frame is doubtless exceedingly old for this area.

I didn't get any pictures, but I'll be back there sometime in the next few days.

One interesting fact about this house frame, the corner posts were hewn out to solid 12x12 (I'm guessing) dimensions but the inside corner notched out so as not to intrude into the interior. I was not aware of this practice being in use in this area. But I have seen very few timber houses locally.

Today I went and visited the barn that is a converted house frame. Here are some pictures, I'd like to here some opinions on this frame -its styling, its ethnic backgrounds, origins of the joinery and frame profiles used, etc. This frame is very different from barn frames of the same period.

I can't confirm it, but I suspect this is an Amish built frame from the early period of settlement. I have every reason to believe this is typical of that period. The Scotch-Irish settlers from that period (having come largely from Kentucky and Ohio) usually built log cabins while the Amish built timber frames. (The Amish were the first settlers of this area, having established their first church in 1848)

Here are pictures:



Please note:
Floor joists are lodged, not tenoned into the cross beams. This is a typical German approach. Presumably they are pegged in place.
The original roof structure is absent. I couldn't access the upper tie beams/joists to determine what kind of structure was in place here originally.
Also note the notched corner posts.

To my eyes, this is immediately reminiscent in many ways to framing practices of the Lower Emmental region of the Swiss Canton of Bern.

As I've studied this frame, there are a few more things to note.

First of all, observe the reductions cut on the ends of timbers, and note that they are centered and not pushed to one edge. This reflects the use of a center line layout technique, while still showing a square rule approach to have been used (this being made maybe in the 1850's or post civil war)

Second, there are only 4 notable differences I can observe between this and a later northwestern Swiss frame (lower Emmental, Berner Seeland, Basel, Solothurn). THese are: Rough hewn timbers, not timber that have been planed smooth. The second relates, and is the cause for the first: lack of wood plank or stone infill and exposed framing on original structure, instead using nailed on siding and plastered interiors. The third is the roof structure, which seems to have originally been a simple standing truss (but, this technique had also caught on in Switzerland at that time, so this point really is trivial) and last, the lack of fully framed window opening complete with window ledges framed into the walls, but this, again, relates to the concealed framing.

The layout method used can really be interpreted as a version of square rule, or it could also be interpreted as a simplification of the Swiss equivalent. I'd like to hear from some of you, do you observe the use of center line rule like this in New England and other parts of the country?

Interesting frame.

The L section corner posts are standard features here for houses built in that era - 1820s to 1860. Most are 12x12 but I have seen 8x8 on some single story houses.

I have seen T section posts at interior bents.

These frames are hard to study as they are almost all behind plaster or paneling.

Braces here are usually down braces - mostly on a 45° but I have seen them steeper.

I've never seen centered timbers here. Plain old quick and dirty square rule is the usual.

I'm not sure about your square rule theory. It could be, but the fact that the interior braces are flush to one face indicates a reference face, and not a centerline. The doubled tenon reductions could be them wanting to use either shorter mortises, or (more likely) the same mortise length for all mortises. I'm sure there's some out there, but I've never seen a centerlined square rule historic frame.

Now that I think of it, I've seen what looked like centered square rule before but it was actually counter-heweing to bring the "reference" face to within spec of the snapped line at the joint (basically correcting out of square hewing or wind but only locally at the joints). That can look like a reduction on both sides sometimes.

I don't know if that's what you have in that frame -- I can't see the details well enough in the photos to have a guess.

Gabel, TImberwrestler,

thanks for coming on with your observations. I was aware of the use of 'L' posts in the east, but until now had never been able to completely confirm this practice locally. Like you said, they are almost all behind plaster or paneling, it's very rare that we get to see one of these. Most people that have them, don't like them, because the way they were enclosed makes them dirty, drafty, uncomfortable homes.

Take a closer look at those braces, many are in fact housed. On some ,the dimensions on the timbers were close enough that no housing was necessary. In fact, the dimensional precision of the primary framing members is extremely high, even though the finish is very rough. Only studs are imprecise, this in the dimension that they did not need to be precise.
I'll have to go back to this frame and study it more closely, to get evidence needed to determine exactly what is going on.

Part of my opinion of layout does stem from who it was that built this, most likely Amish carpenters who were a part of the first group of Amish to come to this area. The important thing we have to observe about this group is that many of them were immigrants or the children of immigrants who had come from either Switzerland or Alsace, and have been shown elsewhere to have carried their Old World practices with them (for example, study closely the framing method of the floor and of the roof on this structure)
Center line rule -a means of shortcuting full scribe, in the same spirit of edge square rule- is a practice of their homeland from that period, and is a practice I have observed in use in Swiss style (short studded, long braced) frames in Adams County Indiana. It wouldn't surprise me to see it here too.

But if this is in fact the case, we shouldn't look at it as part of the lineage of classic square rule, it's another very similar tradition.

This is a method I have seen used in barns and roof framing in Switzerland, the only difference when applied to a house frame is that generally the entire timber would be carefully conformed to the lines established from a central reference, not just the joints. But on this American frame, where the frame itself was immediately buried under siding and plaster, this would have been totally unnecessary.

I have searched a bit for analogous frames where you can clearly see the framing, here is a good example:


That is, if you study the framing of the lower 2 stories, it is essentially the same. (The frame on the right)

Note in this example, every other floor joist is tenoned into a stud or a post. (stud here referring to a single story member, post a multi story member) In the frame in Indiana, only the end and centermost joists are tenoned into posts.

I was back at this frame earlier today and got a closer look at the joint layout. I also tried to study some of the other joinery that was not as clear to me. I determined that it is not possible from this frame to judge the original roof framing, but I can make an educated guess based on other frames nearby that display the same window placement proportions etc. There are 3 common houses frames that are repeated many times in this area.
I specifically set out to look for clues on layout. What I was able to observe is that every joint I surveyed is housed, regardless of where it lies on the timber.
I took several more pictures. I'll upload those when I have access to a computer.

Here are a few pictures I took today, especially trying to examine the natre of joint reductions and housings



Note the initials NW also carved into the beam here. This being the only mark cut into any timber.
Here we can see, this beam end is reduced at its top. From the other side you can also see the bottom of this same beam as reduced at that joint.

As I studied this frame, I did find that every joint is reduced to some degree. In some cases the reduction is slight (not always visible on my poor quality photos) but in other cases it is obviously a double reduction.

This rule of course is not carried through to the floor joists, which by their nature must by necessity be referenced from a single true face in order to create a consistent level support for the floor boards. These are reduced only on a single face, but of course they also only join on a single face...


This is an example of a situation where the reduction on the top of the timber is slight, almost unnoticeable in this picture. Personal inspection confirmed, however, that there is in fact a slight reduction here as well.


This example shows where the timber was actually smaller than the housing that had been prepared for it, and as such has no reduction on one side.


This image is useful to shed light on how the joinery at the tops of the corners works. Here you see the tie beam has been cut away, revealing the tenon on the post. There is another tenon at a lower level which secures the top plate. The tie is then set atop the post and the plate, capturing the plate and further securing it.


Most of the tie beams had been cut out when the frame was converted to make an open roof. Their ends were retained, however, to serve as anchor points for two separate sets of rafters. My original assumption was that the upper rafters -the rafters above the old house frame- were original to this frame, but today's inspection suggests this is not likely. Also, the configuration of these rafters is not consistent with the construction of similar houses in the area.

There are, as mentioned earlier, 3 primary house types from the early period that at least originally were timber framed (the designs may also have been carried forward into balloon framed houses, but these typically have revised designs)

These are all long rectangular houses, the largest, like this frame, is two full stories and is typically arranged with its eaves wall facing the road. Another is a story and a half, somewhat narrower, and usually has a gable end facing the road. The last is a single story structure with an upper level room in the roof space. I believe the house I am sitting in right now to have originally been of this design, but had its original roof removed and replaced with a shallower pitched stick framed roof.

The larger house, the two full story type, reflects the same size and proportions as the house frame contained in this barn. The houses of this style are my strongest evidence that the original roof is entirely missing from this frame. These houses have very broad eaves overhangs and proud gables, something that would not be possible with the roof as set up now. In addition, the rafters are spiked in place with wire nails and secured with crows feet resting on scabs that have been tacked on top of the tie beams/stub ties. This is not consistent with the methods used elsewhere in this frame (or anywhere else, for that matter) and most likely is just a solution created by the carpenter that built this into a barn. There are small timbers used elsewhere in the barn addition that could possibly be the old rafters.

Today I surveyed another forebay barn. This one I had surveyed once before, but wanted to get some more detailed pictures and measurements. The techniques used in this frame are superior, from the bent design to the joinery. It was certainly built by a more competent craftsman (though the builder of the first barn was no slouch). This is slightly smaller, measuring 40x72 and perhaps 10 feet shorter on the upper level, although the basement is taller.
The bent design is better, carrying the purlin loads directly to the foundation and reducing the weight placed on the forebay.
I suspect the rafters to have been replaced at some point, since they are 2x5 circular sawn (typical of barns built around 1900 or later, rather than 1870). The siding is also pine, which would not have been in use here in 1870, when this barn was built.

I especially wanted to observe joint layout tendencies. This is a square rule barn, but the point of reference varies throughout the barn. The center bent, for example, clearly uses a center line layout while other bents use edge layout. The center posts in the end bents (middle bents lack center posts) also display center layout. This shows a very logical system of layout devised to place framing members at the most beneficial spot, ensuring, for example, the center bent is in the exact center of the barn and that the bearing edge of the purlins lie in the perfect plane for the rafters. This demonstrates a layout originating from the center of the barn, rather than from one end wall as is common. THe result is that one side of the barn, in terms of layout and frame arrangement, is a mirror reflection of the other.

Here are pictures:



here are some details showing the layout and joint housings. Some timbers are single sides, some a most definitely double-housed.



The last is a floor joist, which in my experience log floor joists are always laid out to a center line even when other timbers are all laid out to one face, since log joists have no reliable reference face.


And a few joint details


This barn includes wedged dovetail tenons on the tie beams (which were cut out decades ago to use a hay rack, so the roof has spread slightly) and good scarf joints, even if they are not placed in the perfect spot they have functioned well over the years.

So does the middle bent have centered braces?