Housing: A Special Concern
The conversion of barns to housing is not new, but has become increasingly popular in recent years. Yet the changes involved in converting most barns to housing are so great that such conversions rarely preserve the historic character of the resource. Ordinarily, numerous windows are inserted, walls are heavily insulated and refinished, the interior volume is greatly reduced, chimneys and other fixtures normally lacking in barns are added, and site changes, such as close-in parking and residential landscaping are made, giving the building a greatly altered site. Many other barns are "converted" to houses by dismantling them, discarding the exterior, and reusing the internal structural system in a new building. The beams are saved, but the barn is lost.
In cases where the conversion from barns to houses has been successful, the positive outcome results in large measure from the careful choice of the barn: A modest-sized barn with a sufficient number of existing residential-scale windows, in which nearly the whole internal volume can be used as is, without building numerous new partitions or extending a new floor across the open space (haylofts in such cases serving as loft-space for "second story" bedrooms).
Summary
Historic barns form a vital part of our Nation's heritage. Not every historic barn can be saved from encroaching development, or easily brought back into productive use. Yet thousands of such structures can be repaired or rehabilitated for continued agricultural use or for new functions without destroying the very qualities that make them worth saving. By carefully examining the historic significance of each structure, owners of historic barns can draw up plans that preserve and reuse these historic structures while maintaining their historic character.
