Looks at various barns and dwellings throughout the Amish communities in the midwest.

Explore the hayloft, stalls, and hardware of a Montana barn and you will learn much about the state’s farm and ranch traditions. Crib barns, with walls of timber stacked like Lincoln logs, show the influence of French-Canadian and Scandinavian immigrants. Gambrel-roofed barns, which shed heavy snowfall and provide roomy haylofts, tell of the long Montana winters that necessitated ample hay storage. Tack rooms, once filled with harnesses and gear, tell of workhorses given shelter in heavy-duty stalls nearby. Beyond their utilitarian functions, barns are simply beautiful. Some stand proudly, their freshly painted red lines contrasting sharply with the golden wheat in surrounding fields. But some, less fortunate, are falling into disrepair. Marked by rotting timbers and broken windowpanes, these crumbling buildings still have much to teach us. Historic Barns of Montana presents the best, most unique, most significant, and most beautiful of these barns. Photographer Tom Ferris explored barns inside and out across Montana, snapping the hundreds of photographs in the book. Authors and architectural historians Chere Jiusto and Christine Brown help readers understand the significance of what they are looking at and tell the stories of individual barns. Historic Barns of Montana recognizes these buildings as both useful and beautiful, encourages their preservation, and honors the ranch and farm families that built them.

A comprehensive and unique visual resource, Barns will be invaluable to students; teachers; researchers; historians of art, architecture, design, and technology; architects; engineers; designers of all kinds; and those who love barns."--BOOK JACKET.

A generously illustrated handbook for identifying and understanding structures that symbolize the region's unique cultural and historical landscape.

Until Jamestown was established, nothing in North America grew taller than the native forests, grasses, and mountains. Beginning in 1620, the settlers who plowed the indigenous sod also dotted the virgin landscapes with towering, stately structures, the likes of which had never before been seen on the continent. This photo/essay treatment of barns in America is arranged by the five distinct roof styles that have largely come to define American barns, presenting six 20-page spreads detailing the Dutch, bank, crib, round, and prairie styles. The result captures the pastiche of rural America through stunning photography, conveying everything from stone barns in hard-scrabble Maine to thoroughbred barns in the lush bluegrass regions, to traditional Gambrel-roofed red barns in the Midwest. Regions represented include New England, the Southeast, the mid-South, the Midwest, the Pacific Northwest, the desert Southwest, and California. There is an in depth examination of how styles developed out of necessity and anecdotes from those who work and live on farms.

Minnesota's barns are remarkable testaments to a midwestern way of life, one centered on the land, work, family, ingenuity, and perseverance. Many think of barns as breathtaking landmarks along the byways. Others have their favorite barns--the well-kept, red dairy barn near St. Cloud, the faded horse barn on the way to Faribault. Still others know these structures more intimately: barns are as integral to their lives as family and home. In Barns of Minnesota, photographer Doug Ohman showcases the vast array of these exceptional landmarks, built by hand in wood, stone, brick, or metal and dating back as far as 1880. Where Ohman's photographs capture the beauty of the barn from the outside in, Will Weaver's evocative story illuminates the life of the barn from the inside out. Readers witness the making and breaking of one barn as it plays into the life and sustenance of several generations of one family who settled the land in 1922 and who farmed into the age of agribusiness. Seventy-five stunning color photographs accompanied by Weaver's moving story uplift these beautiful buildings and a way of life on the land that is as strong and proud, as fragile and humble, as the barns among us.

"Originally published in the 1970s ... updated with color photographs"--Inside front cover.