A Historic Old Saybrook Barn is Restored
For 178 years, a simple wooden barn has stood, undisturbed but deteriorating, behind the Mercy Pratt Hart House at 63 Boston Post Road. The wooden posts that support the barn’s roof were rotting at their base. Many owners would have recoiled at the high cost to fix the structure and so decide to tear it down. But this barn is lucky—it won’t be torn down because it has a champion in barn owner and former town selectman Steve Gernhardt.
Gernhardt’s project to restore the historic barn, erected circa 1838, began this summer.
“The wooden sills on top of the stone foundation and the barn’s posts were beginning to rot, making the barn unstable. It was starting to list and fall apart,” said Gernhardt.
Two rows of field stones, one upon another, were all that supported the original barn. So to restore it, the unstable stone foundation had to be replaced. To do this, the structure was lifted up onto wooden piers to allow removal of the old stones. Next the contractor poured new concrete foundations to support the wooden barn.
Wooden piers of criss-crossed four-by-fours now support a steel I-beam across the building’s mid-section and other piers support the exterior walls.
As a post and beam structure, the corner posts provide structural support for the building’s frame. And the bottom one- to two-feet of each of the posts, after more than 150 years, had rotted. So before the barn structure could be lowered onto the new foundation, new wood had to be pieced onto the bottom of those structural posts. The wooden sills that had rested on the stone foundation and that supported the main floor were also in poor condition.
Gernhardt explained that the new concrete foundation will be hidden behind a field stone veneer that will be applied to the new concrete foundation wall. The barn’s original wood exterior planks will remain. Some of the wooden planks that were removed, each still with original square nails, will be re-used where possible.
As the building has been raised, curious onlookers seeing the project from the Acton Library parking lot have asked questions of Gernhardt and the contractor’s team. The property on which the barn sits shares a rear lot line with the Acton Library’s rear driveway.
“My intention is to do the work needed to make this barn last another 200 years,” said Gernhardt.
Once the work is done, Gernhardt plans to use the main first floor as work space for restoring an old truck he owns. The half-story loft area will then become a play area for his children. With luck, he hopes that the barn will be ready to use by the end of October.
Barn Background
The barn’s history and construction details were documented in 2010 in the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation’s statewide survey report titled “Historic Barns.” With many old barns being taken down as they age and deteriorate, the trust decided to document those still standing in Connecticut. This barn was one of those documented.
The report described the barn’s style as “a one and one-half story tripartite side or eave-entry barn.” It is “clad in unpainted vertical flush-board and has corner boards. Both doors have diagonal flush-board siding.”
A post-and-beam structure, it is built in the English style, meaning that the main doors were on the barn’s side wall rather than the end gable wall. Helping to firmly date the structure is glass window that contains a cast metal frame, displaying a patent date of 1886.
Gernhardt reported to the trust when the barn was documented in 2010 that, “The house and three outbuildings sit on two acres and is what’s left of the large farm the Harts once owned. We are only the third family to own the property since 1838: the Harts (from 1838-1977), the Burtons (1977-2007) and [now] us...The farm is called Pennywise Farm and the name dates back to the early 1800s when the Harts would let some of the less fortunate local residents who didn’t own enough of their own land to grow vegetables to farm a section of the Harts property.”