page_title: Round barn
section_title: Design
hierarchical_section_title: Round barn / Design
caption_attribution_description: Pete French Round Barn, in southeast Oregon, USA. Interior shot revealing unique roof construction. Photograph by Pete Forsyth, June, 2003.
context_page_description: A round barn is a historic barn design that could be octagonal, polygonal, or circular in plan. Though round barns were not as popular as some other barn designs, their unique shape makes them noticeable. The years from 1880–1920 represent the height of round barn construction. Round barn construction in the United States can be divided into two overlapping eras. The first, the octagonal era, spanned from 1850–1900. The second, the true circular era, spanned from 1889–1936. The overlap meant that round barns of both types, polygonal and circular, were built during the latter part of the nineteenth century. Numerous round barns in the United States are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
context_section_description: Designed in a distinctive circular shape, many of these barns were meant to take advantage of gravity to move hay from the loft to the cow stable below. In many cases, a silo was constructed to rise up through the round barn's center. The round barn was promoted as a labor-saving design by agricultural colleges as a progressive way to house dairy cattle.
  In the case of the Pete French Round Barn near Frenchglen, Oregon, the barn was built with a rock wall around an inner stable area, and included a covered run around the wall where horses could be exercised during the harsh high desert winters.
  The earliest round barns tend to have several flat sides, usually twelve or sixteen. They also tend to be wood-sided while the later round barns are more often faced with brick or glazed tile. The interior design of round barns shifted as well. The early round barns had cattle stanchions on the first floor with the whole of the loft used for hay and feed storage. Later barns possessed a central space which rose up from the ground level through the entire building. The cattle stanchions in this variation of round barn were arranged around a circular manger on the lower level. Above the stanchion level a circular wagon drive allowed hay to be unloaded into the central mow as the wagon circled the perimeter. The final stage of interior design in round barns included a storage silo through the center of the structures. These were not really added until silos became fixtures of American farms. Sometimes the central silo would project up through the roof.
caption: Interior view of the Pete French Round Barn near Frenchglen, Oregon
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon PowerShot S200", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "180", "Image YResolution": "180", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS2 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2007:02:21 08:54:03", "Image HostComputer": "Mac OS X 10.2.6", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "256", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1030", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "9185", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/200", "EXIF FNumber": "14/5", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0210", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2003:06:16 02:12:04", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2003:06:16 02:12:04", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "3", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "245/32", "EXIF ApertureValue": "97349/32768", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "97349/32768", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash fired, auto mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "173/32", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "800", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "600", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "800000/103", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "240000/31", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera"}