Edgemoor Barn Turns 100! Celebration Planned for Saturday, May 11th

Posted on May 6, 2013 by danae

This post submitted by Ellen Henry and friends at the Santee Historical Society in Santee, California. This year, the group is celebrating the barn’s birthday with a big bash to help raise funds for its continued preservation! To learn more about this event, click here or visit http://www.santeehistoricalsociety.com/

On May 3, 1913, John H. Dupee, a high-society millionaire businessman from Chicago, purchased a nearly 500 acre farm for a reported $85,000. Dupee purchased the Williamson’s farm for his son, Walter Hamlin Dupee. Dupee, committed to owning the largest dairy farm in the region, went to work on redeveloping the existing dairy into one of the most prestigious dairy farms known. Between 1913 and 1915, Dupee had many new structures constructed on the Edgemoor ranch. The most prominent of these buildings was completed on July 19, 1913, with construction of a large barn intended for his prize-winning team of bulls which represented the breeding stock of his dairy. As well as expanding dairy operations, he introduced the rearing of polo ponies. The barn would later become known to area residents as the ‘Polo Barn’ even though the pony stables were built elsewhere on the property.

The builder and architect of the barn are unknown but it was built of fir timber construction on a poured, above grade four foot concrete foundation. The exterior siding is redwood tongue and groove clapboard. It was constructed with a Dutch gambrel roof (a ridged roof with two slopes on each side). The roofline is three stories high with large twin cupolas serving as ventilators, making the barn one of the more visible and well-known landmarks in the City. The architecture of the barn is rarely seen in Southern California and very unique in San Diego County.

Alterations to the barn have been relatively minor since 1913, most occurring in 1955 when the County made the building over from an active livestock barn to storage. The most visible of these improvements includes the removal of the exterior sliding barn doors, installation of a concrete loading ramp at the southwest area of the building and enclosure of some of the interior stalls to create offices and locked storage. The top floor and exterior of the barn remain virtually untouched to this day.

In the mid-fifties, the Edgemoor Fire Department was Santee’s first volunteer fire department and its first fire truck was garaged at the Edgemoor Barn. Following the 1955 remodeling, the barn was used by Edgemoor Hospital as a central supply warehouse and storage facility until February 2007 when the Santee Historical Society moved into the building.

In September of 1983 the barn was saved by placing it on the National Register of Historic Places. On May 16, 1985, after hard work by people dedicated to saving it, the Edgemoor Barn was listed in the National Register of Historic Places by the United States Department of the Interior.

Edgemoor Barn circa 1985

In addition to acknowledging the importance of the distinctive Dutch Gambrel architectural style, its size, its condition and consideration of being historically valuable the designation on the National Register will also protect the barn from future modifications and demolition, thereby preserving the building for future generations to enjoy.

The barn in its original location is the last remaining original structure from the Dupee era. Still visible from Magnolia Avenue, the barn and the land it sits on, continue since 1923 to be owned by the County of San Diego.

Agriculture in the San Diego region has changed dramatically by urban competition for land. A drive through San Diego County will soon make you aware of how few barns still exist. Historic barns are a vanishing feature of the American landscape. The wooden barn, once found on virtually every farmstead in the country, has disappeared.

This elegant barn is one of the oldest, if not the oldest building in Santee. It is still around because it was well built by Dupee in 1913, and well kept over its one hundred years of existence. The building, painted to match its original colors of green and white, remains as an outstanding symbol of an era when dairy farming was important to the industry and culture of San Diego.

The Doncaster Barn or Bayers Barn

Posted on February 6, 2013 by HistoricBarns

A guest post by NBA member, Jill Hotchkiss.

The old round barn just outside Twin Bridges, Montana was built in 1882 by Noah Armstrong, one of the lesser known Copper Kings, who was at that time superintendent of the Glendale smelter and discoverer of the Hecla mine in western Montana. Being from Kentucky, Armstrong had a love for horses and horse racing. He purchased the ranch in 1882 calling it the Doncaster Ranch after one of his favorite race horses. He then built a magnificent three-story round barn in which to raise and train race horses. One of the reasons he built it round was so the horses could be exercised in the winter on the indoor track on the ground floor. The ground floor also had box stalls for the horses as well as a saddle/tack room, veterinarian’s room, grain bins and office and living quarters for the jockeys or stablemen. The second story housed hay which could be fed to the horses on the ground floor, through openings or chutes on the second floor. The third floor had a large water tank which was pumped there from the well which was underneath the barn and a windmill which was atop the barn. Water could then be pumped anywhere in the barn, under pressure. There was also a freight elevator to transport the hay, grain and anything else to the second floor. This was quite a fancy barn for the day. There was even a carved horse scene above the front doors of the barn. The barn’s claim to fame, however, was raising Montana’s only Kentucky Derby winner, Spokane, who won the race in 1889. Actually, at that time in history he was the equivalent of a Triple Crown winner, the slate of races being different than they are now.

This article is published in our printed in Winter 2012 newsletter, The Barn Door.

Can you imagine an America without barns dotting the plains or hills? We can’t. Join us in preserving our heritage. Before it is lost. Join us.

Lost of an Iconic Barn. A Cautionary Tale. [Updated]

Posted on July 23, 2012 by HistoricBarns

Photo courtesy of Sally Hatcher.

It brings great sadness to share the loss of the Fuhrken octagonal barn in Doniphan County, Kansas from high winds last week. The barn was featured in the 1992 Budweiser commercial. It was on the 2010 National/Kansas Barn Alliance conference tour.

Fuhrken Barn near Denton. Photo courtesy of Sally Hatcher.

Fuhrken barn was built between 1914-1915 and was 58 feet in diameter. It has a full hay loft with hay hood protected doors on the east and west sides of the mow. It was built primarily to house mules. The exterior was board and batten with many small windows around the livestock area for ventilation. Sometime prior to 1990, the interior was modified, a large door was added on the east side. The Furhken barn had the horizontal joist system removed that had been lofts to accommodate large farm equipment , connections between vertical and horizontal were not well made and there was minimal diagonal bracing. This weakened the structural integrity of the barn.

Barn reclaimer and former building inspector, Thomas Kennedy, who visited the barn during the 2010 Barn Tour, shares that there is much one can do to firm up a structure but some wind and other conditions, at times, cannot be resisted successfully. This may well have been the case. Mother Nature may have won.

Kennedy goes on to say that different parts of buildings perform different functions. Buildings have vertical structure to hold things up; they have horizontal members to carry loads, to hold things together and to separate things and they have diagonal members (sometimes hidden and subtle) to keep things square and plumb.

Kennedy says, “My encouragement to barn owners is not to remove structural members without considering the consequences. A structural engineer can help with this and they are not as expensive as one might think.”

Hidden in Plain Site: Side-Gabled Log Barn

Posted on April 14, 2012 by HistoricBarns

This is a guest post by Jeroen van den Hurk, Ph.D. He is an Architectural Historian based in North Carolina.

You never know what the lush climate of North Carolina hides until the dead of winter. While out of a drive on Sunday afternoon, I came across this abandoned side-gabled log barn in Halifax County, NC. This is an unusual building for eastern North Carolina. It was a one-story, double-pen or dogtrot structure used to store hay. It appeared to be an earthfast building with the log sill laid directly on the ground. The logs were halved and saddle notched at the corners, and there was evidence of pegs near the center of the walls to keep the logs together. The plate was hewn, and there was evidence of both cut nails and wire nails, suggesting that the barn was at least 100-years old. The rafters may have been replaced at some point and the roof was clad in a standing-metal seam roof. One of the gable ends still had the original weatherboard siding, whereas the other gable end was covered with standing-seam metal.

Time, storms, and neglect had taken it’s toll, but it was still standing.

More photos of this barn:

The Grooms’ Heritage Barn. How a Family Restored their 1915 Stockman’s Barn

Posted on March 23, 2012 by HistoricBarns

This is a post by Charles Leik. Charles is chairman of the National Barn Alliance.

It was James Grooms’ great-great grandfather (five generations back) Martin Becker, a German immigrant, who settled in north central Nebraska (Cherry County) in the 1880s. He built a typical barn for this ranching and diversified farming area that housed the cattle, work horses and several cows that produced milk for family use.

According to family lore, this first Becker did well given high wheat prices during WWI and as a result raised his second barn around 1915, which was a very large barn for the area. Mr. Becker soon retired and passed the ranch and barn to his daughter Anna and son-in-law Edgar J. Grooms.

During the ‘dirty 30’s’ the barn was lifted up and set down by a tornado. At that time, it was disassembled, turned to face a different direction and rebuilt with the addition of large side sheds that highlight the changes in farming occurring. It also lost one of the cupolas. In the 60’s a metal-covered north shed was added, which provided ample space for the growing cattle feeding operation and move from diversified farming. At this time James’ grandfather George and his sons entered the purebred Angus bull business, i.e. sold select breeding stock for other ranchers.

By the 80’s, like so many other western barns, the deterioration was underway as the cattle feeding operation changed and purpose built pole barns were constructed. First it was the loss of the cupola from high winds and then gradually the prairie winds blew off the wood shingles installed in 1933. Fortunately the foundation was of poured concrete and dated from this same reconstruction, thus the structure was solid.

In 2007 the Grooms family decided to rescue the barn, the centerpiece of the 26 Ranch and repository of so many memories. In the winter of 2008 a replacement cupola was constructed on the ground. Dimensions were determined from old photographs and in the spring a crane raised the module at the gable end to a location past the hay hood, and “come alongs” winched the cupola mounted on skids along the ridge to a central location.

The weathered wood shingles were gradually replaced with a metal roof. Family members did the labor over the Memorial, Fourth of July and Labor Day holidays. The roofing began with the west top level and the pressure mounted after the old shingles were removed in stages. As a level was stripped, the steel had to be installed before the end of the holiday to cover the exposed deck. Four weeks were required to do the west side (the Memorial Day and Fourth holidays) and after gaining experience, only two weeks on the east side (Labor Day).

James, who lives 600-miles away in Kansas City built window sills, moldings, some of the four-pane windows and some doors at his residence during the winters. He worked hard to save a number of the original windows and their unique period glass. This leaves barn siding repair (to be complete in part with reclaimed wood from another Becker barn!), painting and replacement of detail trim for the future. But as James says contemplating the future, “she’s high and dry and time is on our side now.”

James stresses that except for the rented crane, that family members provided all the labor. “There was no way we could afford or justify the labor to install the roof. However, after a slow start my father, Alfred, and I became pretty adept at installing steel. And, all the rest is pretty much basic carpentry”.

The James family took an intimidating job and divided it into segments over a number of years that made it both manageable and affordable. James, a passionate barn lover, concludes that, “I tell everyone…that you can do this yourself”.