Culture
An Ode to the American Barn
A new documentary charts the disappearance of iconic farm buildings, and makes the case for preserving them.
Just a little northwest of Milwaukee, a small highway stretches through the town of Auburn, Wisconsin. A few decades ago, when the documentary filmmaker Kelly Rundle was a child, the road was lined with farms that members of his family had owned for generations; barns punctuated the open fields and woodlands. Now, he says, almost all of the barns are gone.
In 1935, 6.8 million farms operated across the United States, most with at least one barn. Now, just around 650,000 barns remain standing. With his wife, Tammy, Rundle filmed a documentary chronicling this sharp decline; The Barn Raisers will premiere at the Putnam Museum in Davenport, Iowa, in January.