Dutch Barn Preservation Society

Dedicated to the Study and Preservation
of New World Dutch Barns

NEWSLETTER SPRING 2004 Vol. 17, Issue 1

By Gregory D. Huber

TWO NEW FORMS OF DUTCH-AMERICAN BARNS?

Since the publication of John Fitchen's 1968 classic and seminal work, The New World Dutch Barn, much has been learned of the various appearances and expressions of one of the earliest styles of American barns. Several observers, particularly Peter Sinclair of West Hurley, New York and Alex Greenwood and Eric Endersby of New Jersey, have clearly demonstrated that the complexity of this barn type in America extends far beyond what Fitchen originally portrayed in his book. The extent of his experience and awareness of the style dictated that he only delineated the principal traits and some secondary ones of what is now known as the classic or three-aisle barn. Consequently, far too many casual on-lookers of the barn in both New York and New Jersey have often believed that the three-aisle barn is the only form Dutch builders and farmers constructed in America. Six distinct forms were recognized: the long r)on-extant house-barn form, the three-aisle or classic form, the "Dutch-Anglo" form, the "Dutch-German" form, the one-aisle form and the derivative form (1). Another category was discussed that included miscellaneous types that embrace several very unusual or unique expressions of the Dutch barn style. A few of these might be considered potential candidates as newly recognized forms of the Dutch-American barn. However, two very rare barns, both formerly in Bergen County, New Jersey, have been previously unrecognized as examples of potential barn forms. As will be demonstrated, one of these barns with its distinctive traits qualifies it as a new form. The other barn, while having its own peculiar constructional mode, is not entitled to the same position. A barn type must have fundamental differences from all the other barn forms to be accorded its own status as a distinct form. It should be noted that the classification system of barn forms is a refinement from what was presented in the second edition June 2001, of the New World Dutch Barn.

Original Dutch Barns and Their Attrition

A review of the different forms mentioned above indicates that Dutch-American builders had a wide latitude of forms in which to choose and construct barns in America. They did this, to varying degrees, from the second quarter of the seventeenth century to the last third of the nineteenth century. Not all of the forms were constructed in equal numbers or perhaps even represented in all periods. The numbers and very probably the specific forms of barns that have remained and been examined in the last thirty years have almost certainly distorted any realistic sense of what their original numbers and forms most likely were 125 to 350 years ago. I have estimated that there were approximately 50,000 to 100,000 barns of the Dutch type that existed by. the first quarter of the nineteenth century, when the great majority of Dutch building construction had run its course. At the start of the twenty-first century, approximately 700 barns of Dutch extraction have been seen and variously recorded by a number of observers. There has been a false impression of the total appearance of all the various forms of the Dutch-American barn.

Regionalisms
As part of the full expression of the Dutch American barn style, the idea of regionalisms plays a significant role in a broad-based understanding of the manner in which these barns were originally conceived and constructed. (2) Regionalisms may be defined as particular characteristics that are seen to varying degrees in certain barns extending over variable geographic areas. Certain traits may infrequently, rarely or never be seen in other areas. Regionalisms developed out of certain perceived and localized needs and availability of materials. Certain ideas and expressions initially spread and certain farmers and builders utilized them. However, far too many barns have vanished such that all the exact regionalisms that occurred in original settlement areas could ever be determined. Attendant to this is the loss of understanding of how certain builders and farmers anticipated and solved a multitude of the problems they faced, both in a purely structural sense and in a functional sense. Lost too is a gain of any genuine awareness of how these early folk people were specifically influenced by earlier building and farming practices in America. An incalculable amount of the efforts and the decisions they made were locked into the fabric and structure of each barn and they have simply dissolved over time. The two rare barns in the following discussion will serve as examples of certain structures that had distinctive traits and that varied considerably from what we now recognize as the norm and that was very likely more commonplace on the Dutch-American cultural landscape.

Two Rare Barns as Illustrations
In the barn forms mentioned earlier, all forms, with the single possible exception of the post-1840 derivative barns along with the long extinct house-barn form, appear to be fairly well represented. In order to illustrate the unmitigated disappearance of certain Dutch American barns, two barns, among other potential ones, provide rare opportunities to understand the poorly represented aspect of the few remaining numbers, structural types and possibly forms of the original extent of the Dutch-American barn. These barns also serve to make evident that certain builders and farmers were influenced by particular building methods that were considerably removed from many of the normal cultural expressions adopted in most barns.

The Blauvelt Barn: A Barn with Dekbalk Construction
The first instance of a rare and unique barn, that had survived until about 1990 when it was dismantled, stood on the Blauvelt homestead in Harrington Park, Bergen County, New Jersey.

On the exterior, the barn had the appearance of a "Dutch-Anglo" hybrid form with the standard sidewall entrances. This form was very likely not original. "Hybrid" barns (with the normal H-frame construction) are seen particularly in Bergen, Monmouth, Somerset and Hunterdon Counties, New Jersey. They also appear occasionally in a number of counties in New York. However, the original Blauvelt barn, circa 1800, was very likely in a three-aisle format.

The Blauvelt barn's interior structure was unprecedented in the entire Dutch-American landscape. There were a series of structural units, or bents, but they were not at all in the form of the very typical H-frame or what is called ankerbalk construction in the Netherlands. The H-frame of course is seen in virtually every Dutch-related barn in America. The word anchorbeam, a Fitchen term, was derived from ankerbalk. Fitchen graphically demonstrated more than 35 years ago that what distinguishes ankerbalk construction so clearly is that each end of the horizontal tie or anchorbeam passes completely through the mortise of the post and very often terminate in a salient tongue or extension beyond each end post. In addition, there is an extension of each post above the tie that ends at the soffit of the purlin plate. In the first half of the seventeenth century; the Dutch in the Netherlands used the term verdiepingh (3) to describe this extended post condition in both houses and barns. The verdiepingh in American barn examples may vary anywhere from about two feet (in the Wortendyke barn in Park Ridge, Bergen County) to as much as about 18 feet (in the non-extant and unique seven bay Wagner barn in Rensselaer County). In general, the earlier the barn, the shorter the verdiepingh.

Fig.1 Blauvelt Barn - Barn with roof removed. Framing scheme of dekbalk construction with post of bent tenoned into horizontal tie. Bent braces with lapped half-dovetailed tenons. (Photo - Claire Tholl)

In the Blauvelt barn, main structural framing units were in the form of dekbalk construction. In each unit, a horizontal tie or dekbalk, was mortised near its ends into which were inserted the tenoned upper ends of each of the two vertical end posts of the bents. The mortises in each dekbalk measured 2-3/4 inches wide and 11-3/4 inches long. Each dekbalk, of tulipwood (Liriodendron tulipifera), was a few inches shy of 27 feet in length, thus the nave was over 25 feet in width, substantial by Bergen County standards. Their cross-sectional dimensions were about 12-3/4 inches thick by 15 inches high. The tie oversailed the post by a few inches and there was, of necessity, no post extension above the tie and therefore no verdiepingh of which to speak. As a natural consequence of this, no raising holes were present. Two narrow pegs united the end of each tie to each post. Purlin plates were set into 9 inch wide recesses at the top surface of the dekbalken. The outer edges of the recesses were about 5 inches from the very end of the tie beams. End braces with lapped half dove-tailed tenons united the ties to the posts of the bents. Distinct marriage marks appeared at each tie and post juncture and at the top of the braces. Three dekbalken were in evidence in the Blauvelt barn. At least one dekbalk unit had been definitely removed many decades ago as the precise manner of the framing of the bent's braces indicates.

Frisian Barn Prototype
The use of dekbalk construction is a common feature in the Frisian barn form often found in Friesland, the most northern province (except Groningen) in the Netherlands. The Frisian barn form is distinguished from several other major barn forms that appear in The Netherlands as an aisled form with a high central nave for crop storage from floor to roof peak. Cattle were kept in one side aisle with noses to the side wall and the unloading of hay wagons occurred on the other side aisle. There are a number of cases in the Netherlands where the bents of particular barns actually combined both ankerbalk and dekbalk construction (4) where one end of the bent has one configuration while the opposite end has the other arrangement.

Reasons for Rare Construction
What was the motivation or experience of the builder or farmer to construct the Blauvelt barn in such a seemingly unusual manner? Were his local economic requirements or farm operations so unique that he required a vastly different barn than the H-frame structures that were apparently utilized by so many other Dutch-American farmers? More to the point, how common was the dekbalk-constructed barn in Dutch America prior to about 1825? The first question may be answered at least in part by the identification of the occupants of the Blauvelt homestead when the barn was generally constructed and when and where they originated from in Europe. The answer may point to the Friesland area of Holland. Would a Frisian immigrant farmer instruct a contractor to build his barn in such a distinctive manner so as to include dekbalk framing? Or would the farmer be indifferent to the construction technique and simply require the builder to erect the barn as long as certain dimensions were satisfied? The builder may have been either Frisian or somehow knew the technique intimately. The riddle will likely never be answered but it raises other more significant questions. To what extent are known all the major framing techniques that were utilized by eighteenth and early nineteenth century Dutch-American related timber framers? It is possible that by the first third of the nineteenth century several dozen or more of these barns with dekbalk construction could have existed. If this were the case, this construction type would have constituted a distinct form of the Dutch-American barn. This will never be known, as the attrition rate of barns has accelerated so rapidly in the last number of decades. The number of original barns with dekbalk construction has been long lost.

Ultimately, it is necessarily an assumption that the original use of the Blauvert barn paralleled the functioning of the Frisian barns in the Netherlands as described above. Nevertheless, since the structural composition of the barn was so radically at variance with all other Dutch-related barn forms constructed with H-frames, the Blauvelt barn attains prominence as a singularly important and newly recognized barn form. It is particularly unfortunate that this barn has disappeared that could have remained as a symbol of the divergent methods that were employed by early Dutch-American timber framers.

Interestingly, the associated house at the Blauvelt homestead is constructed of typical Bergen County Dutch sandstone. The house basically mimics many of the general traits seen in the more than 210 other pre-1830 stone houses found in the County. Nothing about the house and its construction suggests any particularly direct influences of any distinct regional vernacular expression. known in Holland-style houses. The house is thought to date from 1805.

The Terhune Barn - A Barn with a Cantilevered End Wall

The Terhune barn in Ho-Ho-Kus, Bergen County, New Jersey is the second structure to graphically demonstrate the limited numbers of extant Dutch American barns. Mostly dismantled in May 1996, the barn was a four-bay structure that was originally three-aisled. However, both side aisles were removed many years ago. Unusually large for a Bergen County barn, the side wall length was a long 48 feet and the central aisle measured a wide 26-1/2 feet. Anchorbeams of tulipwood 11 inches wide by 18 inches in height were the largest known of any of the 36 barns of Dutch type ever seen in Bergen and adjacent Rockland County, New York. Their size was comparable to many of the all-pine barns in the Schoharie and Mohawk River Valleys of New York. All timbers, except anchorbeams, were made of oak (Quercus spp.).

The Terhune barn featured a very rare cantilevered gable end wall that assumed a triangular form above both the purlin plate level and the area of what was the center aisle or nave. The entire cantilever extended 12 inches beyond the rest of the plane of the end wall. A cantilever may have existed at the other end wall. The notched ends of a transverse timber that formed the base of the cantilever were lapped over the similarly notched ends of the projecting purlin plates at which points they were joined and pegged. The cantilever on the exterior face was covered with very old horizontal weatherboarding secured with cut nails. Toward the peak was an original martin hole, a very rare example found on any New Jersey Dutch barn. A very short 30-inch verdiepingh precluded a five-sided cantilever (see Fig. 2, 3, 4, 5) that was seen in a few of the cantilever barns that are discussed below. The primary function of these cantilevers appears to have been for crop ventilation and for some protection from the weather of the large threshing doors just below.

Other Features in the Terhune Cantilever Barn

Rare lapped half-dovetail joinery appeared in the barn's massive 5 inch by 11 inch H-frame braces. The braces lapped condition is most often reserved for bents seen in barns that have major and minor rafter systems in Ulster County, a few barns in both Bergen and Rockland Counties and very sporadically else where. (5) Lapped tenons appear in collar beams when they occasionally occur. This joinery method is ubiquitous in collars that are commonly seen in Dutch-American houses.

Anchorbeams from an earlier barn were flipped over from their original orientation into the cantilevered structure making it one of the earliest converted barns from an original barn that has been studied. In the original barn construction there were also H-frame braces with lapped joints. In the converted-barn form the construction date may have been circa 1780 but the original barn could have been pre-1750 as one of the H-frame braces that appeared to have been recycled was dendro-dated to 1730.

Fig. 2 Verplank - Van Wyck Barn - Exterior of end wall with five-sided cantilever. This circa 1765 three-aisle barn was relocated from its original location near Sprout Creek in the early 1970s to Mount Gulian. (photo - Greg Huber)

Other Dutch-American Barns with Cantilevers
In addition to the well-known and re-located barn at Mount Gulian in Dutchess County, New York, with its five-sided cantilever, the Ho-Ho-Kus barn was the only other extant barn with an intact cantilever. Photographic and structural evidence shows that at least five other structures were known to have cantilevers. (6) These included the VanderVeer and Van Pelt barns in Brooklyn, the Dey barn in Totowa, New Jersey and two barns in Mercer County, New Jersey. The Dey barn was destroyed about 1930 and had very low side walls and very wide gable end walls. One of the Mercer County barns, a circa 1780 structure, was dissambled about two years ago by the New Jersey Barn company and will be re-erected at the same site. At some point in the first half of the nineteenth century two major alterations were done. A new roof with recycled rafters was re-oriented 90 degrees from it original position and new side wall entrances were installed. (7) the 3-bay barn maintained its original dimensions with a 34 foot end wall (original length of side wall) and a 46-1/2 foot side wall (original gable end wall.) distinctive gunstocked end wall H-frame posts are seen, a trait that is known in about 8 to 10 other barns of Dutch type in central New Jersey.

NEWSLETTER SPRING 2004 Vol. 17, Issue 1, Part Two

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