The barn as seen from the visitors' building, May 2015
A closer view of the barn showing stonework. The stone shell is made of ordinary field-stone.
The first level of the barn, interior. Very robust beams of ash were used to construct the barn's framing, which needed to support a substantial amount of weight. Even today horses still use this barn for feeding and general shelter.
The barn's roof is made of long single spans of wood, probably ash, each of which was hand-split to half-way--in other words, beams that start as one at the center split into two as they fan outward to the sides. This roof was built in 1864 as a replacement of the original that was destroyed by fire that same year. The original roof was quite similar, though this framing system was considered an improvement. The height of the barn was raised somewhat to make a third level during the 1864-65 reconstruction.
The 1826 round barn seen from the road. US20 passes through the former Shaker Village, which is on the outskirts of Hancock, Mass, just south of Pittsfield.
