Building Wisconsin’s Barns

By William H. Tishler

Barns are noble structures that highlight our rural landscape. They remain an enormous source of pride for the people of Wisconsin. Many realize that no other visible human achievement reflects the long relationship they have had with the land. However, little information is available regarding their history and how they were constructed.

William H. Tishler, an emeritus professor of landscape architecture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explains the process of building these iconic structures in this book with breathtaking photos and drawings. The author highlights the traditions, carpentry skills, and backbreaking labor that have made barns a beloved component of the countryside. He also recaptures the techniques of an ancient form of construction that is rapidly becoming all but forgotten.

Based on the author’s decades of teaching and field work and his conversations with elderly barn builders who shared their wealth of knowledge, this book will be treasured by those who enjoy the beauty of rural farms and landscapes, or who want to know more about this important aspect of Wisconsin’s history. It can also serve as a guide to their significance and be useful in helping preserve some of these rural icons for future generations to admire and appreciate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Dec 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781665715058

William H. Tishler

William H. Tishler is an Emeritus Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an award winning author who spent much of his career exploring rural Wisconsin and its buildings. He also served as chair of the Wisconsin Historic Preservation Review Board and developed the master plan for Old World Wisconsin, the state’s outdoor museum of rural life.

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Copyright © 2021 William H. Tishler..

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical,

including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written

permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy

of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Archway Publishing

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed

since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not

necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6657-1504-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-1506-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-1505-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021923186

Archway Publishing rev. date: 12/29/2021

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To my wife and children and the thousands of

students I had the pleasure of teaching.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

European Origins

Early American Barns

Wisconsin’s Early Barns

Building the Foundation

Framing

Joinery

Changing Innovations in Barn Framing

Round and Multisided Barns

Other Barn Types

Stovewood Construction

Barn Interiors

Silos

The Demise of Barns

Recollections of an Early Barn Builder

Conclusion

Appendix

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The publication of this book was made possible with the support of David Carlson, Paul Ganshert, Garett Gill, Margarete R. Harvey, The Kubly Family Foundation, Darrel Morrison, John K. Notz, Jr., Judith Stark, Dr. Joanne Westphal, Henry Whiting, and Steve and Joan Ziegler.

I am deeply indebted to Alan C. Pape for some of the illustrations for this book and his in-depth knowledge about barns based on his many years of experience working with them, especially at Old World Wisconsin. I also am grateful to Michelle Naese, who provided the photo of the Birch Creek Music Performance Center; Chic Peterson, for permission to use one of his paintings; Margaret Utzinger, for permission to use a painting by her father, Gerhard C. F. Miller; Phil and Janel Maples; Henjie Jensen, Morgan Judy and Heather Smith from Archway Publishing, for their guidance; my friend, Larry Sommer, who always shared his extensive knowledge of history and preservation; barn enthusiast Bob Sherman; and my colleague, Professor Arnold Alanen.

Credit is also due to the Library-Archives Division of the Wisconsin Historical Society. A good part of the information for this book came from the ability and enthusiasm of the many students I have had. They helped open my eyes and eagerly did the assignments and fieldwork in my historic preservation classes. There are far too many of them to mention here, but a few, like Chris Witmer, Mike Koop, and Lars Barber, were outstanding.

INTRODUCTION

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A Southern Door County barn painted with a King Midas Flour sign, located in a field of yellow sunflowers.

Several books have been written about the beauty and romance of barns, those noble structures that highlight our rural landscape and were the most monumental buildings on a farm. However, little information is available describing how they were built and the traditions, carpentry skills, and backbreaking labor that have made them an integral and beloved component of the countryside. Perhaps no other visible human achievement reflects the traditional relationship we have had with the land down through the ages more than the iconic wooden barns built by our ancestors. Today, we admire with nostalgia and remorse this vanishing heritage. For Wisconsinites, barns have become a source of the pride we have in our state. The symbol of a barn marks virtually every Wisconsin automobile license plate.

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A barn has been portrayed on Wisconsin license plates since 1986.

This book explains the process of building a barn. It recaptures the techniques that evolved from an ancient form of construction that is rapidly becoming all but forgotten.

Some references to barn-building can be found in a few early books about agriculture and farm journals, but they rarely provide an adequate description of how traditional barns were actually constructed. To build them, pioneer builders and farmers relied on their skills and ingenuity without using pattern books, construction manuals, slide rules, and, certainly, computers. Instead, the erection of these noble edifices was usually done under the supervision of a skilled foreman who learned their trade by working many years as an apprentice.

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George E. Harney’s book Stables, Buildings and Fences, published in 1870, was an early guide to barn-building.

For several decades the author did an enormous amount of research on barns. He also taught classes each summer involving meticulous fieldwork to find and document them in Wisconsin and beyond. During that time, he met farmers and a few elderly barn builders who graciously shared their wealth of knowledge about these amazing buildings. He is delighted to have the opportunity to share this wealth of information with readers of this book.

EUROPEAN ORIGINS

The word barn can be traced to the Old English term bere for barley and aern, meaning place, since barley was an important early European crop. In Western Europe, the term barn was used only for the farm building where grain was threshed and stored while farm animals often had separate structures: cows in the shippon or byre, horses in the stable, and pigs in the piggery.

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A contemporary house-barn on Kizhi Island in the former Soviet Union.

The earliest type of barn was the ancient house-barn, sometimes referred to as a longhouse in Britain or maison bloc in France. These structures date from prehistoric times when humans transitioned from their nomadic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle to various types of settlements. Then they built small shelters housing both humans and domesticated animals under one roof with a pit on the floor serving as the hearth. Often these buildings housed large extended families. Sometimes a space for storing their grain crop was also included. Since their harvests were meager, threshing grain could take place on a compacted portion of the living room floor. This simple and economical form of peasant dwelling was used in all regions of small-scale farming throughout much of Europe. Examples of these buildings from the Bronze Age have been found in archaeological sites in northwestern Europe.