East Tennessee Cantilever Barns

East Tennessee Cantilever Barns - Marian Moffett

Two historians of architecture (U. of Tennessee) let their enthusiasm for vernacular architecture get out of hand and grow into a systematic survey of cantilevered barns in their parts. In all they found 316, which they locate, describe, and often illustrate, while discussing their structure and origins, who built them, regional factors, and their place in vernacular architecture. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) " Cantilever barns are nineteenth-century vernacular farm structures found principally in two East Tennessee counties, Sevier and Blount. Their characteristic feature is an overhang, or cantilever, which supports a large second-story loft atop one or more log cribs on the base story. In studies of mountain buildings made in the early 1960s, Henry Glassie identified these barns as characteristic of the southern highlands, indicating that they were found in North Carolina, Kentucky, and West Virginia. In the 1980s fieldwork by Marian Moffett and Lawrence Wodehouse found only six cantilever barns in Virginia and another three in North Carolina. By contrast, 316 cantilever barns were located in East Tennessee, with 183 in Sevier County, 106 in Blount County, and the remaining twenty-seven scattered from Johnson to Bradley Counties. " - tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=195