Former Penn State professor R. Thomas Berner was making the long drive from New Mexico to Pennsylvania when he first discovered his love for barns.
It’s certainly not the most typical passion, but Berner settled in with a group called the Historic Barn and Farm Foundation of Pennsylvania, partaking in their annual barn tour to further his knowledge of the state and its roots in farming.
Berner says he knew fairly quickly that he wanted to make a photographic book on barns, but he felt that more capable photographers had already beat him to it. That’s when the idea hit him: Berner would detail Pennsylvania barns with stories behind them, eventually settling on 36 barns in 23 counties.
“Some of them are just your standard plain-looking barn,” Berner says, “but I wanted to write about barns in the state that have stories to go along with them.”
For some barns, the story comes with their age, like the 262-year-old one located in Chester County, the oldest such barn in Pennsylvania. For others, the story is more intricate than that, like the reassembled barn right here in Centre County.
Lou Moore, a former Penn State agriculture professor, stumbled upon an old Pennsylvania German-style barn in the county that was essentially being sold for scrap. Instead of buying a piece or two, Moore bought it all, relocating the barn 20 miles away onto a hillside just to rebuild it.
Berner’s three-year quest to find the most storied barns in Pennsylvania is documented in his book Pennsylvania Barn Stories, which he will speak about at the Centre Furnace Mansion on Sunday, Feb. 1, at 2 p.m. Admission to the speech, hosted by the Centre County Historical Society, is free.
The author taught journalism and American studies at Penn State for 28 years. Berner is a Harrisburg native and previously worked in State College as the Centre Daily Times’ city editor. Since retiring, Berner has worked as a freelance photographer and writer.
You can preview his book in full online.
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