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I love mysteries that involve really old wood.
There’s an old farm in Mannheim, Pa., that – like so many farms today – saw its last farming days years ago. The homesteads have been converted to B&Bs, while the old 1893 barn was cleared out, renovated, and is now used as a rental hall for weddings and other functions.
We attended an event held there recently, and I was thrilled with how little the space had been changed from its original purpose. The entire first floor was cleared out, all the wood structure and stone walls deep-cleaned, modern HVAC added, and the dirt floor topped with a hard surface. But it all still looks the same as it always had, just brand new again.
But old buildings have tales to tell, and I love admiring the joinery, workmanship and, often, trying to figure out what it all looked like on day one. I was particularly puzzled, and delightedly so, by evidence of beams that simply weren’t there anymore. You can see an example in the left two images above.
That’s both sides of the same vertical beam. (Although many of the vertical beams were the same.) Clearly, at one time another a horizontal beam was joined there, but was cut off, leaving the joinery stub behind. It must have been important, as the joinery is heavy duty: The end of the beam was set into a dado cut into the vertical one, with a thick tenon going deeper into the wood and secured with three hefty pegs.
But what were those horizontal beams for? And since they were obviously intended for some serious load-bearing work judging by the joinery, why were they later removed?
The owners didn’t know – although they restored the space to use as a rental hall, they had no idea what the original configuration of the lower barn was. Since the barn was raised in 1893, that horizontal beam could have been added, and then removed, any time after that, for just about any reason at all.
There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of old structures like this all over America. All of them so old, and changed so many times over the years, that they all share a common trait: being wrapped in mystery. Glad I got a chance to take part in this one, even though I didn’t figure it out.
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