Massachusetts

Bardeen-Culver Barn, 57 Indian Hill Street, West Newbury, Essex County, Massachusetts (42.788041, -70.949639)

Posts Felling Dates: Winter 1693/4, Summer 1699, and Winter 1699/1700

Tiebeams Felling Date: Winter 1714/15

Hayloft Floorboards Felling Date: Winter 1741/2

The Bardeen-Culver Barn, built in 1715 and including several posts felled just before 1700, is a barn of the English type with entrance and exit on the side walls. The English barn, brought by settlers in the seventeenth century to the New World, was the preferred barn type in New England until the late eighteenth century.

One of only a handful of pre-1720 barns that survive in Eastern Massachusetts, the structure incorporates important evidence of early framing and joinery practices. Three bays of the Bardeen-Culver barn, originally at least four bays long, survive. In order to ensure that the barn would be preserved and be available to the public for study, the owners, Francis Culver and Ann Bardeen, recently gave the barn to the Fairbanks House in Dedham where it will serve as a visitors’ center. The barn was documented with measured drawings. In early 2003, it was dismantled for removal to Dedham.

Miles, D H, Worthington, M J, and Grady, A A, 2003 “Development of Standard Tree-Ring Chronologies for Dating Historic Structures in Eastern Massachusetts Phase III”, Oxford Dendrochronology Laboratory Unpublished Report 2003/9

Link to the William Gould Architectural Preservation, LLC's webpage for Bardeen-Culver Barn here.

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