Unconventional shapes

Our deep red car was an unrecognizable gray. Clouds of dust rose each time we opened or closed a door. Both of us really wanted a shower, but my husband and I considered our day a success when we discovered four Eastern Iowa round barns after traveling miles down dusty gravel roads.

Our itinerary was to head north, sketchy directions in hand, to Benton and Black Hawk counties. The search was on.

Round barns made their debut in the United States in the form of octagon barns. Elliott Stewart introduced that form of barn construction in New York in 1874. He promoted the design in Indiana and then throughout the Midwest. Until 1890, any barn that did not have four sides was considered 'round.” The popular octagon was the easiest to construct. Other than its outward appearance, it still had the same interior layout, with stalls laid out in the traditional parallel pattern used in rectangle barns. Octagon barns popped up here and there until about 1890.

Franklin King of the University of Wisconsin-Madison began designing barns to complement his research into round silos in 1890. Up until then, silos were square. With a center silo in the round barn, the top of the silo supported the barn roof. The elimination of interior posts opened space inside the barn. King's designs appeared in university extension reports and in his agricultural textbooks. Eventually, his cause was taken up by others.

At Iowa State University, research was in progress on how to make clay tiles for round silos. In 1908, professor J.B. Davidson and Iowa Experiment Station researcher Matt King worked with a tile manufacturer to develop hollow curved tiles ideal to create round silos and round barns. Using the tiles was a fire-resistant alternative to wood.

Wilbur Frazer at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana published 'Economy of the Round Dairy Barn” in 1910. His enthusiasm helped spread the popularity of round barns and the majority of them were erected within the next 20 years.

Farmers soon were able to order round barn blueprints from Chicago architect William Radford; Fairfield, Iowa, barn equipment manufacturer William Louden and Davenport prefabricated house manufacturer Gordon Van Time Co. Even Matt King, who helped develop the curved tiles, provided plans through the Permanent Building Society of Des Moines. Ultimately, Chicago mail- order houses Montgomery Ward and Sears, Roebuck offered kits.

The barns we visited, four on that first Friday and two more in Iowa and Johnson counties the next Sunday, were true round barns, constructed from 1890 to 1929, with the exception of one, an octagon that was built in 1868.

The first two, near La Porte City in Benton County, were similar: 60 feet in diameter and made of clay tile, with one built in 1910 and the second in 1918. The newer one has a hay dormer and a metal roof that was added in 1998.

The third barn we visited was the restored C.A. Rownd Round Barn in Cedar Falls. It is 66 feet in diameter, 18 feet tall and made of concrete block. It was built in 1911.

The Kugel round barn, north of Cedar Falls, was built in 1915. It is made of clay tile with a two-pitch roof and is 60 feet in diameter.

We went south to find our next two.

The Plagmann Round Barn near Conroy is a huge 100 feet in diameter. It has three levels. The top is the haymow, the middle is stalls and the bottom is a feeding floor. Separate chutes in the middle funnel hay to the bottom floor. It was built with a silo in the center in 1912.

The Roberts Octagon Barn near Sharon Center is 80 feet in diameter and is the only one we saw that is made of wood. It has a cupola and a modified hip roof. Painted a barnyard red, it now carries above its barn door the year it was erected: 1883.

Most of the round barns in Iowa were placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986 through the efforts of 'Iowa Round Barns: The Sixty Year Experiment Thematic Resources,” a multiple property submission to the National Register of Historic Places by James E. Jacobsen and Cheryl Peterson of the Iowa State Historical Department.

Lowell Soike, retired historian with the Iowa State Historical Department and author of 'Without Right Angles - The Round Barns of Iowa,” explained in his book why round barns suddenly lost footing on Iowa farms. 'Hard times sealed the fate of the round barn. The financially difficult 1920s sharply reduced farmer demands for buildings and dampened further experimental ventures. ... The Great Depression halted almost all farm construction, and by the time farmers could afford to build again, round barns - and traditional barns generally - had ceased to be practical.

'The round barn fit the time of horse farming. The farm tractor and its impressive accompaniment of large implements changed all that. Even the largest round barn seldom has enough alley space to allow entry of the tractor with its front-end loader, which cut short the onerous chore of hauling manure. ... So today these barns, along with many of their rectangular cousins, find their use limited.”

l Comments: (319) 398-8338; diane.langton@sourcemedia.net