The Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation is thrilled
to announce its newest project: a comprehensive survey of the
state's historic barns! We hope you will help us with this
exciting project.
We
are inviting volunteers who will help us identify the location of the
barns in their respective towns and/or perform windshield surveys (a windshield
survey is simply taking a photograph of a barn and noting the address, usually
from the safety of a car, thus the name).
Our sixth workshop is Wednesday, March 31, at the Enfield Town Hall,
820 Enfield St., Enfield.
This workshop targets Enfield, Tolland, Vernon, Ellington, Somers,
Suffield, Windsor Locks, East Granby and South Windsor.
We
will give a brief presentation on the history of the barn in CT
and then teach you how to categorize barns by the type, use and construction
technique. The resource identification workshop will involve noting the
approximate locations of the barns to be surveyed. Then we will divide up the town into manageable areas for
the survey groups to survey.
After a team (which consists of at least 2 volunteers) has
been assigned to an area, it will have 4 weeks to survey the area and input the
data in our database, found at www.connecticutbarns.org.
The database will be the foundation for a statewide historic resource
inventory, which will give barns in certain towns some level of protection.
Currently, barns have almost no protections.
Survey information will be used as the basis of State
Register and National Register of Historic Places nominations.
The workshop will include data entry instruction,
photography tips, standard vocabulary and safety issues. Volunteers will be given
a map of their designated area, a letter of purpose of the project to give/show
to wary barn owners (explaining our program),
a sample volunteer timesheet (required by the state), a
booklet with pictures and vocabulary, a letter of commitment to sign and a tutorial
on how to enter the info into the website database.
If
you are interested in participating in this exciting project, please RSVP
by email to barns@cttrust.org or call
at 203-562-6312.
This project is funded by the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism.
