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Sketches of Nebraska Barns ...There’s nothing quite so magnificent as a barn, with its long, self-effacing history—a golden cornucopia from which hundreds of thousands of bushels have spilled. Some of them are architectural wonders. There’s a round barn in Webster County that is 130 feet in diameter and 65 feet high. The red and white Alexander Thom barn north of North Bend on highway 79 doesn’t have a nail in it; wooden pegs keep it together. Harvey Ehlers built a barn near Bennet that is 90 feet in diameter and has a roof rising five stories above the second floor, the whole thing held together by a central silo. How I love them, with their silent, cavernous spaces sprinkled with light, the pigeons cooing in the rafters, those hardworking old ladders whose rungs are worn thin in the middle. Though the world may have plenty of paintings and sketches and photographs of old barns, artists will always be drawn to them, for they are irresistible.  -- Robert Hanna, from the preface to "A Nebraska Portfolio,"  University of Nebraska Press 1992

Radford round barn, built 1917, on Highway 10 near Minden.

Sketches by Robert Hanna Hanna Studios 2930 Cedar Ave. Lincoln, Neb. courtesy of University of Nebraska Press

Winter, Antelope County.	Round barn southwest of David City.

Alexander Thom barn, built 1888, Highway 79 near North Bend.	Harvey Ehlers round barn, built 1922-24, near Bennet.

Frank Uehling barn, built 1918, on Highway 77, Uehling.	Elijah Filley stone barn, built 1874, near Filley.

Barn, near I-80 interchange, Greenwood.

Octagonal barn, Highway 99 near Burchard.

Starke round barn, Nebraska'a largest barn, built 1902-3, near Red Cloud.

For more information, contact the Nebraska Humanities Council. Phone 402-474-2131 or e-mail nhc@nebraskahumanities.org

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