Barn Again
Diversion Magazine, August 1996

There is perhaps no higher expression of architectural salvage than the barn house.

"This is timber from trees that were, in some cases, standing when the pilgrims got here," says Elric Endersby, a partner in the Princeton-based New Jersey Barn Company. "Many of these barns are being ground into landfills every day. We have the sad opportunity to pick and choose the ones to save."

Endersby, who with partner Alex Greenwood wrote the definitive book on barn houses (Barn: The Art of a Working Building), has been taking down and rebuilding vintage barns since the late seventies.

Prior to pulling a barn apart, Barn Company staffers meticulously strip it down to the frame and photograph it in situ. Then they number each piece and disassemble the building for storage in, well, a barn. Would-be buyers can view not only the photos but also the scale model the company builds for each stored frame. To date the company has disassembled about 75 buildings, resurrecting most as houses in other locales.

In early May, Endersby was preparing to ship a Dutch barn frame circa 1710 to San Antonio, where it will rise phoenixlike as a house. Says Endersby, "it becomes, with the Alamo, one of the oldest buildings in San Antonio."

Although his company saves flooring, boards, and hardware, its principal trade is in the oak frames that support old barns.

"Barns work very well as the great hall of a house, where the space is not compromised by a lot of intrusive partitions," says Endersby. Consequently he and Greenwood talk to clients about what they want, and why. They feel a house built around a barn frame should make the most of the old oak beams: "Not everyone wants to live in a house that doesn't have separate rooms, or have a ceiling twenty-five feet off the floor."

Baths and private bedrooms can be designed as add-ons to the great hall, which often encompass an open kitchen, and dining and living areas. From the outside the private rooms thus appear as additions made over time, blending into the building.

Beyond the soaring space and dramatic wood framing is the effect such a structure has on the landscape. Barn houses simply look like they belong.

"You can put a barn in the middle of a field with out a single shrub or tree around it," says Endersby "and it can look right from the minute it goes up."

—Harlan C. Clifford