Down on the Farm: The Ron George Round Barn

We are privileged indeed to have received the following story and photographs for publication. Enjoy this slice of Illinois Route 66 history.

By Joseph D. Kubal

Wheeling along on the “Main Street of America” through the far southwestern Chicago suburbs, no one would suspect that there’s a historic site in the area. There are no famous battlefields here, no locations of old forts, and the big city is far away – but there is an unusual rural architectural exemplar nearby. Just northwest of Romeoville, in some of the scant remaining farmlands of Bolingbrook, stands a barn unlike the typical box-like structures scattered across much of the country. This is the Ron George Round Barn. Listed on the National Registry of Historic Places (NRHP) on December 7, 1982, the barn is worth a visit.

Round barn standing astride suburban development
Photo ©2012 by Joseph D. Kubal; all rights reserved.

Webster defines a barn as “a usually large building for the storage of farm products, for feed, and usually for the housing of farm animals or farm equipment.” The round barn is typically listed as one of the five principal types of general barns built in the U.S., which also include the Dutch, English, Connected, and Pennsylvania styles.

The Ron George Round Barn was built about 1912 or 1913 by Frank Eaton, brother-in-law of round barn advocate Wilber J. Fraser of the University of Illinois at Urbana. It was named for Eaton’s then young grandson, Ron George. Eaton had property along 119th Street/Ferguson Road in the southeastern section of DuPage Township (N 41 ̊40 '01", W 88 ̊08'15"). It was Fraser who encouraged Eaton to build the experimental barn on that land. George, with whom the barn is now permanently associated, was a resident on that property until the 1970s.

This barn was innovative in its time and was designed to be more efficient than the ubiquitous rectangular barn. The structure is made of white wooden board and batten siding. It sports a central wooden, widowed cupola rising to a height of 60 feet above the ground, has a central silo and is topped by a two-pitch conical roof. The George barn cost about $1,500 to erect, and its 60-foot diameter interior at one time probably held both horses and cattle.

First floor of structure showing central silo and stanchions
Photo ©2012 by Joseph D. Kubal; all rights reserved.

The structure was dismantled in 1998 and moved to its current site in unincorporated
Bolingbrook, on the border between Bolingbrook and Plainfield, according to Dale J. Travis, round barn aficionado and expert. It was rebuilt in 2007 through the efforts of the Village of Bolingbrook. The rebuilt barn is now on a farm property at 12421 Essington Road (N 41 ̊39'48", W 88 ̊09'86"), just across from the parking lot between John F. Kennedy Middle School and Elizabeth Eichelberger Elementary School, which is about a block and a half north of the intersection of 127th Street/Chapins Road and Essington Road/224th Avenue. Essington Road is the dividing line between Bolingbrook to the east and Plainfield to the west.

Finding the round Ron George barn is somewhat problematic and requires a look at satellite maps before you set out on the search. You can’t see it directly from the driveway that meets Essington Road because it’s hidden behind a much larger red, rectangular converted barn. The southern approach is screened by trees, and the northern view is blocked by a farmhouse, other outbuildings, and more trees. You have to drive up the driveway onto the property and curve right around the red barn to get a look at it (as this is private property, a courtesy call first at the farmhouse wouldn’t be unwelcome). Fans of unique farm architecture should note that there is also an oval-shaped white concrete-block corn crib with an aerated cupola nearby on Weber Road, just south of the intersection with Romeo Road/135th Street (N 41 ̊37'88", W 88 ̊07'33").

Ron George Round Barn situated at 12421 Essington Road, Bolingbrook
Photo ©2011 by Dale McClannahan; all rights reserved.

Even though they are rare, round barns have a long history in this country. The first round barns were not truly round; rather, they were polygonal with six, eight, nine, 10, 12, 14 or even 16 sides. According to historians Ralph Pedersen and Margo Stafford, our nation’s first president designed and built a 16-sided threshing barn in 1793 for his Dogue Run property on Dogue Creek in Fairfax County, Virginia (not to be confused with his Mt. Vernon property a few miles further east, on the Potomac River; in fact, part of what was the Dogue Run property is now George Washington Grist Mill State Park). Washington’s “round” barn was purported to be the first in America. By the mid-1820s, the Shaker community around Hancock, Massachusetts was involved in building circular structures as barns. However, the period during the 1850s through the early 1900s saw the spread of octagonal and polygonal barns. By the late 1880s through the mid-1930s, true round barns were somewhat in vogue as agricultural colleges and universities helped to promote the unique design. There was an overlap of about ten years or so between the eras when polygonal barns and actual round barns were popular.

Over the years, round barns were demonstrated to be more convenient, stronger, and cheaper than comparable rectangular barns. They were more convenient due to an unobstructed mow (i.e., the area in the barn where hay and straw is stored) and had more efficient distribution of silage due to the centralized silo, thereby saving manual labor. Round barns were also stronger and more wind resistant.

View of interior showing ceiling detail and mow
Photo ©2011 by Dale McClannahan; all rights reserved.

The University of Illinois, among others, promoted the round barn concept to farmers in general and dairy farmers in particular. Three round barns were constructed by the university’s College of Agriculture as part of the Department of Dairy Husbandry’s experimental dairy farm on the school’s South Farms property. Designed and executed by university architect James M. White and the firm of Kell & Bernard, the three Illini barns – the Dairy Experiment Barn, the Dairy Horse Barn and the Twenty Acre Dairy Barn – were constructed between the years 1907 and 1913. This probably was due to the fact that Wilbur J. Fraser, the first chairman of the school’s Department of Dairy Husbandry, was a staunch promoter of round barns. Fraser had calculated that rectangular barns were 34 percent to 58 percent more expensive to construct than their round counterparts. A round barn used less lumber, fewer shingles and less paint and had a central silo instead of a separate structure. It’s no wonder that thrifty farmers took to them.

A shot of the barn's silo looking up
Photo ©2011 by Dale McClannahan; all rights reserved.

Because of the efforts of the University of Illinois and other agricultural colleges, hundreds of round barns were constructed around the country, especially in the Midwest. One such notable example was the Raymond Schulz round barn, Pontiac, Illinois, which was constructed in 1918 as the direct result of the owner visiting the three experimental barns on the state university’s South Farms campus.

Round barn interior shot
Photo ©2011 by Dale McClannahan; all rights reserved.

However, by the mid-1920s, construction of new round barns was on the decline. The death knell of this architectural style came with the general decline of small milking herds and the use of automated feeding and milking systems in the remaining commercial dairies, which favored rectangular barns. There is also speculation that other factors contributed to the round barns demise, such as:

• construction of round barns was difficult for local carpenters,
• round barns were poorly lighted, and
• advancements in other forms of agricultural mechanization also favored rectangular barns and machine sheds.

The future of the remaining round barns is uncertain. Only about 836 round barns remain standing in the U.S. out of a few thousand that were built through the last decades of the 19th Century and the early decades of the 20th Century, according to Travis. Of these, 70 were still surviving in Illinois in early 2012. Thankfully, the Village of Bolingbrook saved the Ron George round barn. Although the barn’s current use is somewhat limited due to today’s poor economic climate, the barn is being looked at as an intricate part of a proposed “living farm,” reports Mike Drey, Bolingbrook’s Director of Public Works and Engineering. Several other old farm buildings already have been moved to the area as part of this conceptual idea. At least for the moment, the future of the Ron George round barn presently looks secure.

Joseph D. Kubal is a Naperville, IL-based geographer, data analyst, and amateur historian. Mr. Kubal is co-author of the forthcoming book, The Curious Traveler’s Guide: Route 66 in Metro Chicago, by Maria R. Traska, Joseph D. Kubal and Keith Yearman.

We sincerely thank Mr Kubal for his submission to our website. We welcome submissions from any and all of our readers on topics pertaining to Route 66. Submit your stories here.

Joe has also kindly included some photos of a Round Barn at the University of Illinois at Urbana. Here's a slideshow featuring those photos:

Bibliography

“Bolingbrook to Save Round Barn,” Joliet Herald-News, April 23, 1998.

Crouch, H. (June, 1912). The Latest in Circular Barn Construction: The Circular Barn is not only More Convenient and Durable but Cheaper than any other Barn. Illinois Agriculturist, Vol. 16, No. 9, pp. 309-313 pages.

Drey, M. (2012, March 2). Village of Bolingbrook, Director of Public Works and Engineering, Personal communication.

Fraser, W. (February, 1910). Economy of the Round Dairy Barn. University of Illinois Agriculture

Experiment Station Bulletin, Vol. 10, No. 143, 46 pages.

Leik, C. (2009, June). Retrieved February 11, 2012, from The Joslyn Round Barn: A Barn for all Seasons: http://www.thebarnjournal.org/featured/24/index2.html

Pedersen, Ralph and Stafford, Margo, “Round and Polygonal Barns of West Virginia,” September 1, 1984, an unpublished report filed with the Historic Preservation Unit, West Virginia Dept. of culture and History; as cited in North Dakota Round Barns, National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form, NRIS Database, National Register of Historic Places, retrieved March 7, 2012 at: http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NRHP/Text/64000477.pdf

Ron George Round Barn. (2012, January 16). Retrieved February 5, 2012, from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_George_Round_Barn Round barn. (2012, January 16). Retrieved February 5, 2012, from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Round_barn

Travis, D. J. (2012, January 11). Illinois Round Barns List. Retrieved February 11, 2012, from http://www.Dalejtravis.com/rblist/rbil.htm Travis, D. J. (2012, February 19). Personal Communication.

University of Illinois round barns. (2012, January 16). Retrieved February 5, 2012, from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Illinois_round_barns

Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc. (2001). Johnson-Eaton-George. Retrieved February 7, 2012, from Will County Rural Historic Structural Survey, Chapter 2, DuPage Township: http://willcountylanduse.com/HPComm/ruralsurveyreports/DuPage/05_DuPageC...

Woolf, Henry Bosley; ed. (1981). Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary. Springfield: G. & C. Merriam Co.