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(More customer reviews)The following is an excerpt from a review in Vernacular Architecture Newsletter, Feb. 1999.
The outbuildings of rural dwellings have customarily received less attention than the dwellings themselves. The fields of architectural history and historic preservation have long focused on dwellings, for such reasons as their sheer abundance and the fact that they may have been repositories of the fanciest and trendiest architectural detail. But visitors to rural areas will often find that a farmstead's ensemble of outbuildings may overshadow the dwelling in size, number, or visual prominence. The outbuildings reflect past activities of people and animals, and connect the dwelling to the system of fields, fences, driveways, and other farmscape elements.
Thomas D. Visser, Associate Professor and Interim Director of the Historic Preservation Program at the University of Vermont, recognizes that barns and other outbuildings are far more important than as mere picturesque elements of the rural landscape. From the massive barn to the lowly privy, "each has a story to tell." In his Field Guide to New England Barns and Farm Buildings, Visser provides "clues for deciphering the many layers of history spread over the rural landscape... to help observers... realize the wonderful insights that can spring from an understanding of the evolution of our rural heritage."
Visser's book may be used two ways, as a reference book and as a handy, portable field guide. It stands alone as a good concise history of New England farm buildings with an understandable concentration on barns, the most necessary structure of a farmstead other than the dwelling. The specific fieldwork for this volume took two years and was concentrated in areas preselected for their relevance. The fieldwork not only made possible this excellent guide to identifying, understanding, and appreciating farm buildings, but recorded a dwindling cultural resource. Visser has for years encouraged the preservation of barns, building interest among their owners. This book, it is hoped, by increasing awareness of these often neglected structures, will advance the cause of their preservation.
The Field Guide to New England Barns and Farm Buildings will prove informative and entertaining to a wide audience, from agricultural historians to New England residents who haven't truly appreciated the value of farm buildings as cultural resources.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Field Guide to New England Barns and Farm Buildings (Library of New England)
The quintessential New England barn -- photogenic, full of character, and framed by flaming autumn foliage -- is an endangered species. Of some 30,000 barns in Vermont alone, nearly a thousand a year are lost to fire, collapse, or bulldozers. Thomas Durant Visser's field guide to the barns, silos, sugar houses, granaries, tobacco barns, and potato houses of New England is an attempt to document not just their structure but their traditions and innovations before the surviving architectural evidence of this rich rural heritage is lost forever.A recognized authority on historic barn preservation, Visser has combed the six-state region for representative barns and outbuildings, and 200 of his photographs are reproduced here. The text, which includes accounts from 18th- and 19th-century observers, describes key architectural characteristics, historic uses, and geographic distribution as well as specific features like timbers and frames, sheathings, doors, and cupolas. From English barns to bank barns, from ice houses to outhouses, these irreplaceable assets, Visser writes, "linger as vulnerable survivors of the past. Yet before these buildings vanish, each has a story to tell." Travelers, residents, and scholars alike will find Visser's text invaluable in uncovering, understanding, and appreciating the stories inherent in these dwindling cultural artifacts.
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