Getting a Square Meal from a Round Barn

South Farm
I found South Farm on the list of National Historic Register sites in Champaign County. Over a hundred years old, these barns still stand on the southern part of campus where they keep all the agriculture and veterinary buildings. Mostly to keep them away from the more refined disciplines. If you have Agriculture Majors and Humanities Majors vying for space on the same sidewalks, things are bound to get ugly. The barns were built pretty far from the central part of campus, at least in CU notions of distance. From the Main Quad and the Morrow Plots to the Round Barns, it's got to be nearly a mile as the Turdus flies. To get pictures, I had to park next to some soccer fields where coaches were yelling at college kids in practice jerseys.

Hatch Act
The Hatch Act of 1887 granted federal funds to state colleges to create Agricultural Experiment Stations. These Stations operated as research centers aimed at improving agricultural practices in the US.

UofI thought it over and said, we'll take your money.

The Department of Dairy Husbandry proposed to create an experimental farm to improve milk productivity and dairy efficiency. Wilber J. Fraser, head of the department, had kept a close eye on the development of round barns popping up all over Indiana.

Round barns require less lumber for bracing and trussing than conventional barns. Less lumber meant round barns cost less to build and, oddly, they tended to have greater stability. Also, the unique design, according to advocates, makes these barns more resilient in Midwestern storms. I guess they're more aerodynamic or something. The use of round barns on South Farm created this wild popularity for round barns in Illinois, ushering the state into the Round Barn Era (it's a real era, I'm not just saying that).

Twenty Acre
The Twenty Acre Dairy Barn went up first, in 1908. This is a Banked Barn, which means they built it into the side of a hill so both the first and second levels are accessible from ground.

The Twenty Acre Barn has a large interior silo that reaches from the bottom level to the top of the dome. You know, for storing hay. It sat behind the Manager's House, so I didn't get a good shot. Also, I didn't want to go conspicuously stomping around a research farm. I was incognito.

Manager's House
Built at the same time as the Twenty Acre Barn, the Manager's House provided sleeping rooms for four employees and offices. According to people who know what they're talking about, this is a hybrid of Tudor Revival and American Craftsman.

If you want to know what an American Craftsman (Arts and Crafts) style looks like, drive down any old residential street in Shawnee or Georgetown and look to your right or your left.

Or look for these things:

• Low pitched roof.
• Deeply overhanging eaves.
• Exposed rafters under eaves.
• Tapered, square columns.
• Mixed materials.

Developed as a fin de siecle response to the aristocratic Victorian style (Queen Anne), the Craftsman style was the distinctive Middle Class style in the US, at least into the 30s.

Dairy Horse
The department added the Dairy Horse Barn in 1910. I don't know what dairy horse means, but I would pay money to watch someone milk a horse.

Dairy Experiment
The final and most expensive of the four buildings, the Dairy Experiment Barn joined the party in 1912. It's another banked barn.

I found a cross section of the Dairy Experiment Barn on Wikimedia:

The Illinois Historic Preservation Agency lobbied to get South Farm included in the Registry as a Historic District. The Feds added it to the list in February, 1994. I emailed the current UofI Agriculture Department asking for information about research conducted on South Farm. As of the writing of this post, no response has been received. This leads me to believe that something clandestine and sinister occurs in these round barns. In fact, the other day, I thought I saw a Holstein with dark glasses tailing me as I took the dog for a walk. But when I looked again, it was gone.