Barns (Norton/Library of Congress Visual Sourcebooks) [Hardcover]

John Michael Vlach (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2003 | Series: Library of Congress Visual Sourcebooks

A far-reaching visual survey of farm buildings across the United States, tracing their historical and regional influences.

The first in the Norton/Library of Congress Visual Sourcebooks series, Barns presents a broad, fresh, and newly informed visual analysis of one of America's fundamental building types. In a nation founded upon agrarian principles, with a cultural and physical landscape as vast as it is diverse, the barn has long been recognized as an American icon. Drawn from the vast holdings of the Library of Congress, nearly 1,000 illustrations provide a tour of barns across the United States, from New England to the Great Lakes to the South, Midwest, and Far West.

Barns traces geographical and chronological continuities of type, design, and construction, and Dutch, German, French and Spanish influence. Captions identify each document and building, and all images are included on a CD-ROM with a link to the Library’s high-resolution files.

Barns is the first comprehensive visual resource of its kind, an invaluable tool for architects, historians, students, and all those who love barns.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A work that exceeds the expectations of the most demanding historians of American rural studies…throughly researched from an impeccable list of sources and interpreted in a lively style that engages both the academic and the casual reader. (Bright Eastman - TDSR )

Impressive...well arranged...These rich images provide fascinating glimpses into the character of the American landscape…through its great breadth there is no doubt that Barns will play a very important role in helping to provide for better public recognition and appreciation of one of America's most threatened cultural resources. (Thomas D. Visett - APT Bulletin )

A treasury of fabulous photographs…being a comprehensive and unique visual resource, Barns will be invaluable to students, educators, researchers, historians, and lovers of barns. (R. P. Meden - Choice )

Barns....is the first (one hopes of many) in the Norton/Library of Congress Visual Sourcebook Series. Vlach (George Washington Univ.) presents a captivating visual perspective on American history through one if its cultural and architectural landmarks. Tapping into the holdings of the Library of Congress, the book contains more than 800 illustrations. The book offers a treasury of fabulous photographs as well as plans and elevations, with captions that furnish relevant information about each building. The accompanying CD-ROM contains high-quality, downloadable versions of all the illustrations, including a direct link to the Library's online searchable catalogs and image files, which compromise the hundreds of thousands of high-resolution photographs, measured drawings, and data files in the Historic American Buildings Survey, Historic American Engineering Record, and other collections. Being a comprehensive and unique visual resource, Barns will be invaluable to students, educators, researchers, historians, and lovers of barns. (Choice )

It's not that I don't treasure my urban roots or the convenience of technology . . . It's that I carry with me, as I suspect we all do, some nostalgia not only for my own childhood but also the childhood of the country.  That's what Vlach has collected in Barns.  And even if the ladders in our childhood memories grow smaller as the years go by, his book is a reminder of just how tall they once were. (Alicia Anstead - Bangor Daily News )

Any barn enthusiast will be fascinated by its depth and breadth. (This Old House )

[A] tour de force…History and architecture buffs and scholars alike will valuable information in this book. (Martha McDonald - Clem Labine's Period Homes )

About the Author

John Michael Vlach is professor of American Studies at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (February 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393730867
• ISBN-13: 978-0393730869
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #413,073 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Resource on Barns, February 3, 2004

By 

grasshopper4 (Arkansas) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Barns (Norton/Library of Congress Visual Sourcebooks) (Hardcover)

I highly recommend this book for general readers and researchers interested in relationships between architecture and history. John Vlach has a comprehensive knowledge of architecture, and he insightfully writes about the importance of barns and rural cultural landscapes as resources for studying history. This new volume is an important resource for studies of rural folk culture as it provides studies of a great variety of barns and an array of approaches for learning about vernacular architecture.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Barn Research, January 6, 2010

By 

S. Hadskey - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Barns (Norton/Library of Congress Visual Sourcebooks) (Hardcover)

I am an architect and I bought this book to research barn types for a barn I am renovating. The CD with it was a pleasant bonus, however, I wish the pictures were higher resolution. It is very difficult to ferret out the actual built details on some of these barns--the pictures in the book are small, and the CD wasn't as helpful as I hoped.. The history of barn types was very helpful, and nice to see the HABS/HAER program drawings included. It is a fairly comprehensive survey. I wish more barn types had been included in the Northeast section, and of course more structural detailing drawings or photos would have been nice throughout--not just elevations and floor plans. Structural systems for heavy timber framing and distributing lateral loads vary a lot throughout the country, and by barn type, and often inform how the barn is used--there are better books for that.

I especially liked the built farm equipment section (hay cranes), even though that wasn't why I bought it, because I'd never seen pictures of it before. And old hay stack methods before the balers were invented were also interesting. The history of the transverse crib barn was very useful.