Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn: The Connected Farm Buildings of New England [Deluxe Edition] [Paperback]

Thomas C. Hubka (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2004

"Big house, little house, back house, barn"--this rhythmic cadence was sung by nineteenth-century children as they played. It also portrays the four essential components of the farms where many of them lived. The stately and beautiful connected farm buildings made by nineteenth-century New Englanders stand today as a living expression of a rural culture, offering insights into the people who made them and their agricultural way of life.

A visual delight as well as an engaging tribute to our nineteenth-century forebears, this book has become one of the standard works on regional farmsteads in America.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"An unexpected small masterpiece...that has some of the suspense of a detective story and, at times, the poignance of deeply felt, sympathetic social history."--Robert Campbell, Boston Globe

"An important pioneering effort. The book commemorates both an unique indigenous architectural expression and a way of life that has become extinct . . . The style is economic and clear and Hubka's affection for architecture binds the buildings to their people and their times."--Maine Sunday Times

"No matter where you live, you will want this book as a model of vernacular architecture scholarship."--Vernacular Architecture Newsletter

From the Publisher

8 3/4 x 11 5/8" trim. 134 illus.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: UPNE; 20th Anniversary Edition edition (March 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1584653728
• ISBN-13: 978-1584653721
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #100,215 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful debunker of Maine myth!, March 18, 2001

By 

J. R. Braugh (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn: The Connected Farm Buildings of New England (Paperback)

If you have ever wandered around Maine, you will have noticed a unique form of farm architecture. But ask most people why 19th century Maine farmers made such a concerted effort to physically connect the structures on their farms and the answer is "they needed a way to get to the barn through the winter snow." Trust me, I have gone around and asked current dwellers of Maine farmsteads. Thomas Hubka carefully points out that if that were so, we'd see similar connected farm architecture in parts of the nation where winters were even more inclimate and snowier. Yet Maine farm architecture remains almost totally enigmatic. Hubka's diligent field work reveals that forces were at work in mid-19th century Maine that conspired against the rural farmer: industrial competition for hand-manufactured goods produced at home for cash suppliment, a labor drain to other more prosperous farming regions, and unyielding land. The brilliance of Hubka's work is that he evokes how, despite all this, Maine farmers strove to adapt by creating resilliant islands of industry with the structure of their homes that defiantly sheltered year-round dooryard work efforts from wind and snow, but also change abroad. This book is also a perfect source of pithy detail and illustration regarding 17th century cape-style house architecture which, it turns out, is still ubiquitous in New England. Highly recommended, a stiking work.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars when lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed, January 24, 2001

By 

Stanwell1840 (MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn: The Connected Farm Buildings of New England (Paperback)

There's a type of farm layout that you see in New England that you don't see elsewhere in the US. This book is a study of that type of farm, its whys and wherefores, and how it fit into people's lives -- or better, how their lives fit into it.

This book is written very clearly, with numerous graceful diagrams of floor plans, layouts, and photos of representative farms. The author has a deep sympathy for the ordinary farmers and their taxing occupation, as can be seen in the choice of photos (farmhouse buried in snow, barn on fire, farm family sitting in a front yard still dominated by those granite cobbles you expect to be piled into fences). Diagrams tell the demographic story of why these farms were created, why they belong to northern New England; how they were achieved and how people spent their lives in them.

For me, the magic comes in because I fell in love with one of these farms, and its sunny Lincoln-era dooryard. It has a subtle rightness because of its orientation, its site on a knoll, and a certain flexibility of layout. But even if you don't have such a reference point, I think you will be impressed at the perceptiveness of the work, if you can muster any interest at all in the topic.

p.s. I checked on the Web to see if the author is still flourishing. His current project seems to be the wooden synogogues of tiny eastern european towns. Sounds neat...

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enthralling rural history., November 17, 2004

By 

James Taylor (Hampshire, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn: The Connected Farm Buildings of New England (Paperback)

Lets get this straight, this is NOT a coffee table book - if you want lots of colour pictures of old farms and barns - look elsewhere. What it is though, is a well written, brilliantly researched and documented assessment of a largely by-gone way of life in rural New England. Look - I'm even British and I loved (OK - I do have an interest in New England and architecture)

If you are vaguely interested in old rural life, agriculture, history and social history, or vernacular architecture (or any combination of these) - buy it you won't be disappointed.