The Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation is thrilled about one of its ongoing projects: a comprehensive survey of the state's
historic barns! We hope you will help us with this exciting project.
We are inviting volunteers who will help us identify the location of the barns in their respective towns and/or perform windshield surveys
(a windshield survey is simply taking a photograph of a barn and noting the address, usually from the safety of a car, thus the name).
Our ninth target area is the Northwest portion of the state which includes Bridgewater, Canaan, Cornwall, Goshen, Hartland, Kent,
New Hartford, New Milford, Norfolk, North Canaan, Salisbury, Sharon, and Warren.
Please join us at a presentation & workshop on July 28th, 2010 at 6pm at the Kent Town Hall Meeting Room, Kent.
We will give a brief presentation on the history of the barn in CT and then teach you how to categorize barns by the type, use and
construction technique. The resource identification workshop will involve noting the approximate locations of the barns to be surveyed.
Then we will divide up the town into manageable areas for the survey groups to survey.
After a team (which consists of at least 2 volunteers) has been assigned to an area, it will have 4 weeks to survey the area and
input the data in our database, found at
www.connecticutbarns.org. The database will be the foundation for a statewide historic
resource inventory, which will give barns in certain towns some level of protection. Currently, barns have almost no protections.
Survey information will be used as the basis of State Register and National Register of Historic Places nominations.
The workshop will include data entry instruction, photography tips, standard vocabulary and safety issues. Volunteers will be
given a map of their designated area, a letter of purpose of the project to give/show to wary barn owners (explaining our program),
a sample volunteer timesheet (required by the state), a booklet with pictures and vocabulary, a letter of commitment to sign and a
tutorial on how to enter the info into the website database.
If you are interested in participating in this exciting project, please RSVP by email to
barns@cttrust.org or call at 203-562-6312.
Thank you for your consideration.