A stone barn outside Chase, Wisconsin, almost disappeared in 2007 when the land was sold for development. Instead, community support flipped the script. The developer offered the barn to the town, and local leaders pushed for preservation, grant funding, and a long-term plan to keep it standing.
The building is a 100-by-60-foot reminder of what traditional masonry can do. Its four exterior walls are made of fieldstones that show up every spring as the area thaws, a local material supply that helped make stone construction practical in the early 1900s. The barn’s walls are an eye-catching mix of granite, quartz, gneiss, gabbro, schist, hornblende, mica, and feldspar, all set into a structure that has held up for more than 120 years.
The barn’s date stone reads, “1903 D.E. Krause architect Wm Mensenkamp mason,” a rare public nod to the mason’s role. The details back up the credit. Keystone-laid arched limestone lintels frame doors, brick arches frame windows, and large fieldstones were cut and set as corner quoins. Inside, a stone half wall separates work space from the stable area, and hand-hewn rafters bear on roughly 2-foot-thick stone walls, with additional support from canted queen posts.
For mason contractors, the project is a practical case study in preservation work that actually pencils out when a community is committed. Listing the barn on the National Register gave the effort momentum, and the Chase Stone Barn Preservation Project raised $530,000 to get restoration done by 2014. The barn is now positioned for adaptive reuse, with new flooring for events and a plan to convert the stable area into a rustic agricultural museum.
Read the full, original article from Farm Progress here.