Village barn at Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site

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Historical Furnace Village Main Page

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The large barn at Hopewell Furnace is referred to as the village barn because its use benefited the entire community. This was where the company mules, horses, and dairy cows were kept. The furnace community required draft animals as well as animals for food such as cows, sheep, hogs, and chickens. To keep the animals and the workers fed, 200-plus acres were set aside to grow hay, buckwheat, rye, corn, wheat, and oaks, and the Hopewell Furnace company employed people specifically to farm the land. What couldn’t be grown on the premises was purchased from other farms in the area.

Merino sheep in a field at Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site

The barn at Hopewell Furnace is a bank barn, which is a barn that is built into the side of a hill. On the top-of-the-hill side, the entrance is on the upper floor. On the bottom-of-the-hill side, the entrance is on the ground floor. The upper floor was where the animal feed was stored while the animals themselves were kept in stalls on the lower level. Bank barns were typical of the Pennsylvania Dutch culture.

Top-of-the-hill side of the bank barn at Hopewell Furnace National Historic Site

After the furnace went out of business in 1883, the Brooke Family descendants who owned the property continued to operate a dairy farm. In 1926, they modified and enlarged the original barn, leaving very little of the original other than a few walls. In restoring the Hopewell Furnace village back to its 1820 to 1840 appearance, in 1959 the National Park Service torn down the 1926 components of the barn and hired Amish carpenters to build it back to its original appearance as much as possible. The project was completed in April 1961. This work was based on other existing mid-1800s barns in Pennsylvania, old photographs, and the recollections of Charles Painter, the man who tore down the original barn to build the new one in 1926. He had a good memory of what the old barn looked like. Painter was supposedly very pleased with the reconstruction.

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