EASTERN BARN CONSULTANTS - Key Persons

A chance meeting with barn author Eric Sloane in the fall of 1974 provided the original impulse so that barns would be followed and looked upon with discerning eyes. After almost 20 years of research a series of writings was done so that more than 100 articles on barns and closely related topics have been published to date (Spring 2009). The articles in sum contain the greatest collection of facts about barns by one author ever assembled in the entire world. In addition, Greg has co-authored two books - he edited the second edition of John Fitchen's - New World Dutch Barn in 2001 and along with two other authors co-wrote - Stone Houses - Traditional Homes of Pennsylvania's Bucks County and Brandywine Valley in 2005. More than 10,000 copies of the second book have been sold. In the 1991 to 1994 era he edited and published four volumes of the "Dutch Barn Research Journal." It was the first journal in the world exclusively devoted to pure vernacular barn research.

This collection of general barn terms is offered in an on-going effort to educate barn people in more precisely knowing the various construction elements of vernacular barns and the various structural components that builders incorporated into the buildings that they erected and some of the tools that builders used. At the end of this general list of barn terms there is found a list of terms that are normally associated with Pennsylvania barns. Since Pennsylvania barns are culturally very important and hundreds of thousands of them still exist these terms are important to identify various structural elements in them.

Some of the earliest Germanic barns are of one-level ground type. The first ones were made of log, later ones were often made of stone, and certain nineteenth century ones were made of frame.

Job Titles:

• the Eastern Barn Consultant

The Eastern Barn Consultant web site is the lifelong inspiration of Greg Huber who went on to observe, record and find anew ancient barns in the eastern sections of North America. These venerable old buildings were found in out-of-the-way places and forgotten quarters of the continent. Since 1974 approximately 3,500 barns have been visited and examined to varying degrees in more than 15 eastern states and certain areas of Canada. Through these years he discovered in the barns' timbers and their forms certain manners of building expressions and heretofore unknown secrets were revealed. Ultimately he knew these venerable old buildings needed to be revived and their story told to an envisioned enlightened public.

STABLE WALL - The stable wall or stahlwand at the basement level in Pennsylvania barns often of stone and sometimes of brick or even wood is set back from the front edge of the end wall by four to as much as ten or more feet. It contains several animal doors and one or two feed-entry doors. Very often these doors are halved, with a top and bottom.

SUMMER BEAM - This is the barn-length longitudinal ceiling beam - gable wall to gable wall - in the basement that forms the main support of the second or loft floor above. Actually, joists support the floor above, but the summer beam in turn supports the joists that appear above the summer. They are often spliced in one or two spots. Summer beams are often large-sized and very often oak. A fair to good number of barns have two summer beams. Rarely do barns have three summer beams. And one very large circa 1840 barn east of State College remarkably has five summer beams. TRANSVERSE - This is an orientation of a timber positioned in a barn that is perpendicular to the roof ridgeline - or side wall to side wall. Full barn width transverse timbers are upper tie beams and basement level ceiling joists. Another type of transverse timber that does not run the full barn width is a partial tie beam that appears in bents a few feet below the upper tie beam. UPPER TIE BEAM - This is the transverse beam at the top of a bent that spans nearly the entire width of the barn and appears at the top of the bent or more rarely that is seen dropped one to two feet below the tops of the posts. It is almost always in line with the wall plate. Upper tie beams are usually associated with early English barns in New England and they tie the longitudinal side wall bents together. In Pennsylvania these beams rest on side wall posts that appear on frame barns and may or may not rest on posts in stone barns. They are placed into position after the bent is raised into its vertical place. This type of beam is found in Pennsylvania fore-bay barns until the Civil War and occasionally beyond. UPPER PARTIAL TIE BEAM - These beams are sometimes called scaffolding beams. They often appear in bents of Pennsylvania fore-bay barns and are seen a few feet below the upper tie and stretch between a side wall post and a centered post.

Pennsylvania barns are categorized into three classes: Switzer, Standard, and Extended. Pennsylvania barns are denoted by their cantilevered fore-bay or projection over the basement level stable wall and are two-level banked structures. Switzer barns may have been erected before about 1750 but were commonly built in the 1780 to 1810 era and in certain areas one to three decades beyond this time. In certain areas such as the Mahantango Valley above Harrisburg, Switzers were erected into the 1830s and 1840s. Switzers have asymmetrical roofs, where the distinctive appendage-like fore-bay at the barn front creates the roof asymmetry. With no detailed explanations provided, four types of barns comprise the Switzer class. Basically, the specific types in this barn class depend on the inspection of construction materials and internal morphology. Standard barns are characterized by symmetrical rooflines. These barns were first constructed in the 1790s, but were far more commonly erected after about 1820 and then up until the late nineteenth century and somewhat beyond. The width of fore-bays in Standard barns is quite often about four feet but can measure up to 6 to 8 feet or even more, depending on the specific barn and barn sub-class. Unlike in the Switzer class barns the transverse framing units or bents are contained within the front fore-bay area of the barn. Ten types of barns comprise the full Standard class. Over time, varying characteristics of the types depend on the depth of the forebay, the method of forebay reinforcement and other morphological variations. Extended barns are those Pennsylvania barns that have been enlarged by amending or extending the barn beyond the basic Switzer and Standard framing limits. Many of these extended barns are seen in southeast Pennsylvania but the front extended barn sections were additions. Five types of barns comprise the Extended class.