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Blue Ridge Institute and Museum

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1979 museum; 1992 institute. 20 Museum Dr.
  • (Photograph by Anne Carter Lee)

Ferrum College's farm museum, part of the Blue Ridge Institute and Museum, is a collection of endangered structures moved from nearby locations, mostly from within Franklin County. Like many farm museums, they are set by the side of a modern highway. Here, however, they often serve as a backdrop for successful folklife festivals and farm demonstrations. Grouped together, the buildings attempt to demonstrate life on a c. 1800 German American farm in the western Piedmont. In the German building tradition, the farm's diamond-notched log house has a three-room plan with an interior chimney. The V-notched log kitchen is joined to the house by a breezeway. Among the outbuildings are an outdoor bake oven, a weaving house, a blacksmith shop, a springhouse, and a large, two-crib bank barn, one of fifty-eight documented in Franklin County by the Blue Ridge Institute. The Blue Ridge Institute (1992, Dickson Architects) houses a small museum with carefully mounted exhibits.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Anne Carter Lee
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Data

What's Nearby

Ferrum College
Bleak Hill
Oakdale
Farm at the Furnace
N. Morris Building

Citation

Anne Carter Lee, "Blue Ridge Institute and Museum", [Ferrum, Virginia], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/VA-02-FN19.

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