"The Art Barn
Utah State U. boasts a barn that holds a store of unusual and interesting ceramics.
The bar[n] that refuses to cater to even registered livestock is the only authentic art barn in the Mountain West. It looks enough like a farm structure on the outside, but on the inside hay and stalls have been replaced by a kiln, potters' wheels, glazing machinery and cases and stacks of unfinished and finished ceramics.
On[c]e the barn did provide quarters for cattle, but when Utah State began to enlarge its campus facilities, and changed its status from agricultural college to university, personnel began to wonder just what they were going to do with the large out-dated landmark standing at the center of campus.
Other agricultural facilities were eventually moved to North Logan, but the 'too stationary and sentimental to be transported' barn was left archaic and virtually deserted.
Then came a 1959 spring quarter fire that destroyed a small and inadequate ceramics studio located [in] the Main Building. A party of fine arts instructors had a unique idea for a Utah State 'first.'
Ceramics and equipment that had not been spoiled by the blaze were moved into a 'renovated and modernized' building--a structure to be officially termed: art barn.
One remaining dobbin didn't seem to mind being moved out when students' artistic vases were moved in.
Today, just a few short months after remodeling the old barn, students interested in art flock from all parts of the nation to listen to lectures and try their hand at ceramics in barn headquarters.
The ceramics lab with its orange doors, smell of warm shellacs and wets paints provides a highly specialized world for those in art education."
Below: A picture of the Art Barn surrounded by cars from the 1959 edition of the Buzzer, USU's former yearbook.
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