Friday, January 24, 2014

Maine Coast Vernacular: federalist houses and the Granite Farm dairy barn

It's called Federalist architecture here in the US, Georgian in the UK and Ireland. In the US version, often restraint went out the (fanlight) window. Here's a boisterous example from 1805, in Wiscasset Maine. Why only one fanlight, when three can fit?  And here's Van Morrison singing about cleaning fanlights. I wonder if Van's remembering Dublin or London in this song--not much Georgian building in his native Belfast.
The Granite Farm dairy barn is on a backroad road between Brunswick and Freeport. Much bigger and more serious than a typical Maine saltwater farm hay barn. Only in New England do people proudly name their farms after rocks.


3 comments:

  1. I'm wondering if this is a picture of the farm that my father, William Paxman, owned & operated back in the 1950's or 60's maybe. I've often heard of dairy granite farm in Brunswick that my father owned & operated. If anybody knows could you please get a hold of me somehow. My email is lorrie.paxman@yahoo.com

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  2. Yes, the Paxmans ran that farm through at least the 1970's I believe. I lived there 1972-1973

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