NEW LEBANON, NY .- The Shaker Museum|Mount Lebanon is hosting guided walking tours inside the massive remains of the North Family Shakers’ Great Stone Barn on Friday, July 31 and Friday, August 7 at 2PM each day. The tours, which detail the history and current state of the Barn, will leave from the Wash House Visitor Center and Museum Store. This is the first opportunity for the general public to enter inside the structure since a fire destroyed the roof and much of the timber frame 43 years ago. Tour admission is $10 and free for members.
After the successful completion of a major stabilization last fall, the Barn was deemed safe enough to begin taking small groups of visitors inside on guided tours. Together with Hancock Shaker Village and Shaker Heritage Society, a series of two “Barnstorming Weekends” will take visitors inside each historic site’s major barn buildings as a part of themed programming related to the collaborative exhibition at the New York State Museum, The Shakers: America’s Quiet Revolutionaries. At Mount Lebanon, visitors will accompany a guide through an exhibition about the Great Stone Barn in the 1838 Granary and inside the ruin of the Barn itself to experience the enormity and importance of the structure personally.
“These tours are a real milestone for the Great Stone Barn,” said Museum President David Stocks. “Since the museum completed the complex stabilization of the structure last year, the building is now safe from collapse and safe for at least a few guided visitors to enter. This is a preview of how this monumental structure can be used in the future for tours, programs, and events.”
When the Shakers constructed the Barn in 1859, it was believed to be the largest stone barn of its kind in the world. It served as the center of their dairy business, utilizing modern factory design to centralize what had been a series of separate barn buildings. The cows first began to be brought into the Barn on November 6, 1860, the same day Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States, and since that day was continuously used by the Shakers until 1947, when the last seven North Family Shakers departed Mount Lebanon.
On September 28, 1972, a tragic fire led to the destruction of the Barn’s wooden interior, roof, and exterior sheds, leaving the masonry walls exposed and vulnerable. Beginning in 2004 when the Museum acquired the North Family property, an ambitious stabilization and restoration effort was planned to remedy the extensive erosion and deterioration in the decades since the fire.
In June 2013, after $2 million was raised for the project, stabilization efforts began with the re-cementing and re-grouting of three walls, re-building the western parapet wall, reinforcing the manure vault with structural steel, and the restoration of 35 wood and marble window lintels. In November 2014, stabilization was completed. With a $500,000 grant awarded from New York State in December 2014, work has continued on the structure. Permanently capping the tops of the walls with lead flashing was completed in June 2015, and plans will soon begin to floor the structure, creating a huge outdoor space within the stone walls.
