Old World Meets New
More than any other factor, what differentiated American timber framing from its predecessors in the Old World was when the Old World pioneers came to America, they were confronted with a very different building reality in that the materials they had on hand to build with, namely trees, were vastly different from their experience in Europe. By the 1600′s many European countries like England, Ireland and Holland had been deforested. And though there was a tradition of timber framing, they had by this time, very poor quality trees to work with. For this reason they employed even the short and unstable crooks of trees in their buildings, a practice that became unnecessary in the New World.

Where had all the mighty English oaks gone to create this shortage of timber? Literally, up in smoke. This was before the age of coal-burning and wood was used for heating and cooking, as well as home building and wooden shipbuilding.

In our years of restoring historic timber framed barns, this hand hewn hemlock timber is the largest we have ever seen. It is part of a barn built in the Mohawk Valley of New York state circa 1840. 
The timber is 35 feet long and measures 13″ thick by 28″ at the widest point. That’s well over 900 board feet of lumber in a single beam.

After over 165 years of natural air drying, this beam weighs around a ton. When it was first cut green using only simple hand tools and transported with horses, it likely weighed over 3500 pounds!

Counting the tightly spaced growth rings, we determined that the tree from which this timber was hewn was around 300 years old when the early American farmer cut it to build his barn. It was a towering 100-year-old hemlock when the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth harbor in 1620.

Through Their Eyes
Can you imagine the awe these settlers to the New World felt when they arrived and saw the virgin American forest? They were probably stunned . . . and intimidated. The New World forest contained straight trees over one hundred feet tall: pines, hemlocks, oaks, chestnut (which was said to have made up one third of the northern forest), maples and beech, just to mention a few of the species. And sometimes this difference between New and Old World trees had deadly consequences. The first permanent settler to Bergen County in Northern New Jersey in 1670, David Demarest, lost his namesake and oldest son to a falling tree soon after they arrived. The Demarests had immigrated first to New York from the low country of Holland and prior to that were persecuted Huguenots in France. They had probably never encountered a forest when they began to build their homes and barns on the bank of the Hackensack River.

So here in America converged a unique combination: skilled European wood craftsmen and an untouched, virgin forest. And when the two were combined, they produced for a period of time, the finest and largest barns ever built in the world, during what we might call the “Golden Age of Barns,” before the Eastern forest was clear cut to make way for agriculture and industry, and the Industrial Revolution brought an end to the art of timber framing in America.

Historic Barn before being moved

Historic Barn after moving and restoration

To Move or Not To Move?
As the founder and owner of a commercial barn preservation company I have operated on the premise that through our barn preservation work we are striving to save America’s architectural treasures from demise and destruction. I recently realized, however, that my lofty opinion of our efforts is not held in common by all other preservation lovers. This poignant realization dawned on me when I tried to join a prestigious (and apparently exclusive) Northeast association dedicated to preserving local architecture. Last year I contacted the Association and dutifully sent in my $20 annual dues at which time I expected to be installed as a full-fledged member in good standing. I even contacted one of the officers and offered my help in any way that might be needed in their crusade to save local architectural treasures.

I awaited the arrival of my first issue of the Association’s quarterly newsletter, informing me of upcoming events, which I planned to attend: house tours, symposia and the such, that all admirers of local historic architecture cherish, especially when it comes to meeting other like-minded history buffs.

All was well thought well between me and my new-found friends in the Association. . .UNTIL I mentioned to them that I had a good deal of experience moving historic barns and restoring them. It now seems that the “restoring” of barns is not what irked them. It’s the “moving” of barns that they find so odious.

As of this date, over a year after paying my membership, I have not received any newsletters and my calls to the Association have apparently been ignored. I take this to mean that, despite the fact that I have saved dozens of barns from the wrecking ball and given them new life, I am not accepted as a member in good standing after all, and would go so far as to say that I am persona non grata in the halls of the Association, my name having apparently been duly struck from the membership role (though I am certain my dues were put to good use).

This personal anecdote is representative of the controversy in the historic preservation world that our barn restoration work cannot help but to be at the epicenter of, whether we like it or not. That is the question of whether it is ethical to dismantle and move a historic building like a barn. The opposition we get on this is that barns belong where they are. They are part of the local history, and to move them is to rob the local community of their heritage. This controversy has gone on for some time. The British Museum with its Elgin marbles has some serious competition from American industrialists and entrepreneurs when it comes to raiding historic architecture, which is (perhaps in its darkest hour in America) exemplified by Henry Ford’s plundering of America’s historic industrial sites like the Wright Brother’s bicycle shop and Edison’s Menlo Park Lab, which he dismantled and carted off piece-by-piece to Michigan

Another, more recent example is the stone-by-stone removal of the 1831 London Bridge from its home on the Thames to Arizona. It was on London’s bridges that the heads of yeoman farmers-turned-paupers were publically displayed, executed for opposing the enclosure laws that expelled them from their ancestral agricultural lands and homes to make way for sheep herds and the coming industrialization of the textile trade. The bridge is now the centerpiece of a kitschy waterpark over a manmade lake in the middle of the desert. If those peasant heads were still hanging there, their eyes would probably roll every time a bathing-suit-clad jet skier streaked by.

A Deeper Dynamic?
Despite this ignominious history of plundering historic architecture by well-heeled individuals, I counter the argument against our barn moving by saying that concerned, local preservationists are just as capable as we are of restoring barns, and they should put their actions where their sentiments are by doing something about these barns that are falling down, like London Bridge was, and literally becoming compost piles. But I also sympathize with these local concerns and believe that what is at the root of this problem is a much deeper dynamic:

Agriculture in America has taken a direction that makes traditional barns obsolete. It went industrial and BIG along with the rest of the economy. Tens of millions of families were forced off their farms over the past one hundred years because of the Industrial Revolution and its handmaiden, the Transportation Revolution. Yes, I agree, communities need their historic buildings. These structures are the visible links to our past that offer a tangible stability to every community. And that is why we preserve them. Our company policy has always been to defer to any person or historic preservation group who would restore a barn in place that we had planned to move.

We are sometimes challenged on this issue specifically by barn enthusiasts. But, in fact, we have done more to preserve barns than most anyone in this country. We have moved and restored over one hundred and fifty barns that through our business efforts have found new homes in the hands of very appreciative new owners, though most times in places where the public cannot gain access to them (not that they could access them when they were hidden away on private farms). An interesting footnote to this controversy is that about a third of the barns we dismantle have already been moved at some point in their history. Whether sold to the farmer up the road or across town, they were moved largely because farmer Jones no longer needed the barn and farmer Smith did. Not unlike the reason we move barns for people today. So, I argue that in moving barns we are not doing anything out of the ordinary, and such moves are part of their continuing story, another chapter to be written by another family in another place. Can this continuity be argued with? We are simply carrying on the tradition.

In the meantime, I encourage everyone to join their local preservation associations. These are dedicated, well-meaning people who love their local architecture and communities and are working to preserve them. . . . But don’t mention my name when you do. You may never see your $20 again!