Originally there were approximately 200,000 barns built in Iowa. Now it is estimated that only 60,000 barns remain, with another 1,000 or more barns disappearing from Iowa's landscape annually. This book preserves in print Eastern Iowa's historic barns built from 1839 to 1955 with over 175 photographs from the author's research, the first ever Amana Colonies barn tour, the Johnson County Historical Society barn tour, and the Iowa Barn Foundation's annual barn tour. Eight Iowa counties and 20 rural cities are covered. Former president Hoover was living as a youth five miles from one of the featured octagonal barns when it was built in 1883. This barn's aesthetic beauty is so inspiring that people from other countries come to visit this barn each year to see the unusual bell shaped roof, a suspended staircase, a railway car, and laminated interior ribs. It may be the only barn built with a bell shaped roof and is thought to be the oldest surviving barn built of it's kind in the U. S.

Food historian Cynthia Clampitt pens the epic story of what happened when Mesoamerican farmers bred a nondescript grass into a staff of life so prolific, so protean, that it represents nothing less than one of humankind's greatest achievements. Blending history with expert reportage, she traces the disparate threads that have woven corn into the fabric of our diet, politics, economy, science, and cuisine. At the same time she explores its future as a source of energy and the foundation of seemingly limitless green technologies. The result is a bourbon-to-biofuels portrait of the astonishing plant that sustains the world.

This book includes over 175 photographs covering twenty rural cities and eight different counties together with the first-ever Amana Colonies barn tour. Many different types of barns are displayed such as: octagonal, hexagonal, Pennsylvania, monitor, gambrel, and gable.--Back cover.

In Buildings of Iowa, David Gebhard and Gerald Mansheim trace Iowa's architectural history from the earliest Native American influences to the present. Divided into five regional areas--Mississippi River East, Mississippi River West, and the Central, South, and North regions--the book's entries within each area are presented on a town-by-town basis to include the full array of Iowa's architectural offerings in various styles. Whether discussing farm houses, barns, and silos or churches, schools, courthouses, and libraries, the volume shows how a unity of rural and urban is effectively mirrored in Iowa's buildings.

Originally published in 1995, Barns of the Midwest is a masterful example of material cultural history. It arrived at a critical moment for the agricultural landscape. The 1980s were marked by farm foreclosures, rural bank failures, the continued rise of industrialized agriculture, and severe floods and droughts. These waves of disaster hastened the erosion of the idea of a pastoral Heartland knit together with small farms and rural values. And it wasn’t just an idea that was eroded; material artifacts such as the iconic Midwestern barn were also rapidly wearing away. It was against this background that editors Noble and Wilhelm gathered noted experts in history and architecture to write on the nature and meaning of Midwestern barns, explaining why certain barns were built as they were, what types of barns appeared where, and what their functions were. Featuring a new introduction by Timothy G. Anderson, Barns of the Midwest is the definitive work on this ubiquitous but little studied architectural symbol of a region and its history.

In his widely acclaimed The Pennsylvania Barn, Robert Ensminger provided the first comprehensive study of an important piece of American vernacular architecture—the forebay bank barn, better known as the Pennsylvania barn or the Pennsylvania German barn. Now, in this revised edition, Ensminger has continued his diligent fieldwork and archival research into the origins, evolution, and distribution in North America of this significant agricultural structure. Including an entire chapter of new material, 85 new illustrations, and updates to previous chapters, this edition of Ensminger's classic work will appeal to students and scholars in cultural and historical geography, folklore and vernacular architectural history, and American studies, as well as to general readers.