EXCHANGE: Henry County round barn badly needs new roof – SFGate

EXCHANGE: Henry County round barn badly needs new roof

KEWANEE, Ill. (AP) Shafts of light stream in from dozens of cracks in the roof of the historic Ryan's Round Barn.

This is not just any barn rotting away in the countryside. Located in Johnson-Sauk Trail state park off Illinois 78 between Annawan and Kewanee, the barn was completed in 1910 by Dr. Laurence Ryan, a Henry County native who became chief surgeon at St. Anthony Hospital in Chicago.

Dr. Ryan wanted a place in Henry County to be a retreat for his family. He built the barn for a "new" breed of cattle he had heard about in Scotland: Black Angus. At 61 feet tall and 74 feet in diameter, it's deemed the largest round barn in Illinois. Its interior has three and a half levels and a central silo, with four gambrel dormers spaced evenly around the edge and a cupola at the top.

Dr. Ryan died in 1932, and an Annawan banker sold his farm to the state in 1968. The barn was among a number of buildings the state had slated for demolition until the Friends of Johnson Park came together to preserve it.

In 1974, the barn was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Ten years later, the structure was re-roofed with original-style wooden shingles. After more than 30 years later, the barn needs roofing work again.

Three years ago, estimates were gathered for redoing the roof: $201,000 for asphalt shingles over the top of the old ones; $236,000 for wood shingles over wood and $245,000 to tear off the old shingles and replace with wooden shingles.

The type of shingles needed "depends on who you talk to," said Steve Christian, president of Friends of Johnson Park Foundation.

"I love barns and I love history," said Mr. Christian, now retired. "They were looking for volunteers, and I offered to be a tour guide. I came to this meeting and dinner, and I found out I was on the board already."

Mr. Christian said that, when state candidates campaigned in 2014, the group was told Illinois didn't have funds for the roof work. A lack of a budget in 2015 brought the re-roofing effort to a complete halt.

The steepness of the roof has proven a good thing, Mr. Christian said. The barn's interior is basically sound, although the siding holds moisture from the leaking roof and has started to deteriorate. The leaks also have caused some rotting in the hay mow in the loft.

"It creates havoc with everything that's underneath it or everything that touches it," he said.

Mr. Christian's group explains to visitors that the barn is not a multi-side structure appearing to be round. Instead, the structure was made with 16-foot lengths of pine soaked to hold a bend. Even large interior beams are bent, with five one-inch boards laminated together to form the beams.

Why round?

Mr. Christian tells visitors that while it was more expensive to build, the barn was labor-saving in the long run. One man with a pitchfork could feed 50 cattle with little movement. But the advent of tractors and evolving farm machinery made round barns obsolete, he said.

"You can't bring a tractor in and turn it around," he says.

While the barn may not attract crowds as large as the Lincoln Library in Springfield, Mr. Christian says the landmark holds its own. More than 1,000 visitors go through the barn tours each year, he said.

"We draw a pretty good size crowd here, and we have people from all over the world," he said. On June 3, that crowd included guests from California and Puerto Rico.

The barn also could use new paint. In 2004, that task cost $3,200. The Friends have set aside money from tour fees to repaint the barn this summer, but they worry even that repair may not happen. They still need approval from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, and they haven't heard yet if they can.

Landmarks Illinois, a preservation non-profit group, this year named Ryan's Round Barn as one of 10 endangered historic entities in the state. While the friends group tackles smaller barn projects, such as repairing metal flashing at dormer windows, the roof work is beyond their abilities or pocketbook.

"We can handle window replacement," Mr. Christian said. "But at a $2 donation, we cannot come up with a quarter of a million dollars to put a roof on.

"Our hands are tied," he said. "We can't do anything until we get a budget."

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Source: The Rock Island Argus, http://bit.ly/2skbSmw

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Information from: The Dispatch - The Rock Island Argus, http://www.qconline.com

This is an AP-Illinois Exchange story offered by The Rock Island Argus.

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EXCHANGE: Henry County round barn badly needs new roof - SFGate