The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is reporting that a group called the Illinois Barn Alliance is trying to preserve what’s left of the state’s historic barns.
The group is encountering two problems. One, it’s not sure how many old barns are even left in Illinois. Second, farmers tend to be a practical lot and often tear down old barns when they’re no longer useful for their day-to-day operations.
The story cites two cases of barns that have been preserved. One is a barn near Freeburg that was dismantled and moved near Edwardsville. The other is on old Route 66 south of Litchfield.
At least a century old, it’s a working farm, centered by a sprawling collection of 21 structures – cow, horse and pig barns, chicken coops, a goose house, corn cribs, a smokehouse, a grainery and machine sheds.
“They’ve all got names,” explains the owner, Ophelia Niemann, who was born here. She won’t disclose her age, but she notes that her father was born here, too, in 1895. The farm was already established at that point. Niemann isn’t sure how old the buildings are, but most of them clearly pre-date her.
“They don’t build farms out of wood anymore,” Niemann says, gruffly, during a tour of the rambling sheds and barns. “Now they build them out of metal. They don’t have any class, any of the features that wood barns have. A barn has many things a metal shed will never have.”
The Illinois Route 66 Association at least had some foresight on this issue. In this list of preservation projects, you’ll see the restoration it did on the Cayuga Barn and Hamel Barn, both of which advertised Meramec Caverns on its sides. Here are more images of the two barns.
If you wish to help the alliance, call Jean Follett at (630) 654-9717 or e-mail jafollett@comcast.net , or call Wes Winter at (815) 235-4125 or e-mail wwinter@uiuc.edu.
Any thing i can do let me know, this subject is close to my heart!
Todd