Barn Images | Conclusion | Dairy Images | Function | History | Shutdown | Smith Sites | Students

The Sewanee barn still stands, empty after years of disuse. It stands at the end of the baseball field, and homerun balls can still be found in the weeds around the barn. Perhaps it remains as a result of Sewanee's nostalgia for its past. Sewanee is, after all, a community of remembrances and traditions, where historical markers are abundant and the people know lots of old stories. But there are no markers at the barn besides a "DANGER -- KEEP OUT" sign by one of the doors. Instead of being preserved, the University Barn has been almost forgotten. Those who remember it well are few, and they are getting old. A very few documents about the barn persist in the Sewanee archives, buried in files of past Vice-Chancellors, and in the records of the trustees and treasurer.

This web page has been created by the students of the Rural Religion class at the University of the South and it attempts to capture and collect memories and statistics about the University Barn. The site contains photographs and a Quick-Time™ movie of the barn and the site it stands upon. There are maps of the farm, transcripts of interviews conducted, and a few drawings. Most importantly, the site contains the narrative of the barn: its history and function, the story of the people who worked there, the reasons for its shutdown.

The University Barn is worthy of study for several reasons. (1) It was part of the Sewanee farm, an attempt by the University to be self-sufficient and frugal after the Depression. (2) It is an atypical structure -- built without blueprints, on a foundation of tiles originally manufactured for encasing underground cables, and used solely for feeding cattle and storing hay. (3) The barn is a decaying building on a campus which prides itself on its history and memory. This barn needs to be remembered.