Young Round Barn, Greene New York
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- New York
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- Round Barn
The Young barn, built between 1914 and 1916, is historically and architecturally significant as one of the best examples in New York State of a fully developed round barn with a central silo. Bearing marked similarity to published barn designs from Wisconsin and Illinois between 1890 and 1910, the Young barn incorporates innovative features including a center silo with a silage chute, a radial stanchion layout, a stud wall system, a large entrance bay which could accommodate modern farm machinery, and two circular hay fork tracks hung from the roof rafters. The barn is noteworthy for its distinctive exterior appearance resulting from its pressed iron sheathing, decorative splayed lintels above all openings, its double-hipped main roof, repeated by a double-hipped cupola roof, and the consistently round milk house extension with a domical roof.
The Young barn was designed and built by DeVern Bates for James Clifford Young after an earlier barn on the site burned. Bates had been a builder at the extensive Tarbell Farm in nearby Smithville where he may have been introduced to contemporary literature on barn design and construction. Twelve years later, Bates used his experience in designing and building his own round barn one mile north on Route 12.
The Young barn continues in its original use as an active dairy barn and is in good condition.
Barn Description
The Young round barn is located on Round Barn Farm, approximately three miles south of the village of Greene on Route 12 in Chenango County. The farm incorporates 183 acres on the west side of the Chenango River straddling both sides of Route 12. The barn is located immediately adjacent to and east of the highway. An early farmhouse and several conventional barns occur on the west side of the road. One small rectangular barn is located directly south of the round barn on the east side of the road. These surrounding structures have not been evaluated due to their lack of association with the central plan dairy barn theme. Consequently, the site includes only the round barn, its connected additions, and a three-acre parcel 300 feet in width east and west and 400 in length north and south along Route 12.
This large circular barn is roughly 80 feet in diameter, with a large square entrance bay to the southwest giving access from the road to the upper level. It is two stories tall with a conical two sloped gambrel roof topped with a circular cupola venting the loft and central silo. The concrete foundation wall extends one foot above the ground floor. Above that point the walls have pressed iron imitation brick sheathing over board siding which is nailed to studs; 2" x 8"s on the ground story and 2" x 6" on the upper level; in both cases 16" on center. The roof is standing seam tin. The circular silo in the center runs from the ground floor to the roof.
At the ground floor level it is concrete and in the upper story it is framed with 3" x 4" studs covered inside with horizontal boards and halfway up the outside with thin beaded horizontal siding.
The ground story houses the cows in a circle of 47 stanchions with the manger on the inside towards the silo and the gutter around the outside. Above the gutter is a litter track. The floor is concrete. The area under the entrance bay provides space for additional stock and the milkhouse.
A silage chute is located on the north side of the silo, and there are trap doors above the manger to drop down hay and straw from the upper story. The primary entrance to the ground floor is to the northeast and now connects to an addition with two attached round silos. There are 20 windows spaced evenly around the perimeter, with a gap under the entrance bay where the barn was built into a slope. Around the stanchion line is an irregular ring of posts, some wood and some steel. Around the silo is a second ring of 8 posts, each 8" x 8", which carries a compound timber beam, indicating that the silo carries little floor load at this level. The floor framing is hidden by a homosote ceiling.
The upper level was originally used for hay, grain and equipment storage. At this level a ring of 10" x 10" posts is roughly aligned with the ring of stanchion posts on the ground floor. These posts rise to the break point of the roof. Outside of this ring of posts the story is open up to the roof. Inside of the ring a loft is framed with heavy beams and braces between the posts and the silo at the level of the roof plate. The ring of posts is broken at the entrance bay, creating a gap spanned by a timber truss supporting the inner loft. The roof of the entrance bay is carried on timber trusses. The main roof is framed with 2" x 6" rafters spaced 16" on center at the outside walls. Two hay tracks are suspended from the rafters, circling the barn above the inner loft and the outer ring of space beyond the posts. The upper story has three sets of vertically aligned windows to the northeast, north and southeast. The floor of the upper story consists of double thickness boards laid perpendicular to the entrance axis.
View from southwest (1984)
View from northwest (1984)
