Sibley Barn

Hiram Sibley purchased the three-hundred-acre farm of Nathan Orcutt in 1835 and enlarged Orcutt's small Cape brick house somewhat unusually by adding wood-frame ells to the front and rear of the house, sharing a single ridgeline. The result is a farmhouse with a cruciform plan. The family also added a working ell off the rear ell, attaching it to a good-size English barn in the connected-architecture arrangement then becoming popular. Hiram's son Fred and his wife, Ella, took over the farm in 1875, adding a small dairy bank barn parallel to and behind the English barn and placing matching louvered cupolas atop both. Fred continued to expand his herd and began farming with his son Roy and daughter-in-law Alice. In 1899, they erected this late bank barn to hold forty cows. Most notable are its square cupola with paired arched windows and corner pilasters, and the long covered bridge with a queen-post truss at its gable end facing the road. Placed on the west side of and connecting to the two earlier barns, the new bank barn created a sheltered, southeast-facing barnyard. Now, the fifth generation of Sibleys maintains the barn, with its intact hayloft, high drive, and original main stabling story. As on many working farms, the former manure basement is now used for stabling.