Original 1919 Barn Blueprints & Architect

USU History graduate student Jon Alfred, working with the wonderful scholars in USU Special Collections, has found the original blueprints for the Barn, drafted by W.L. Skidmore in 1919. We believe W.L Skidmore is William Lorenzo Skidmore, who attended Brigham Young College and had a practice in the Arimo Block in Logan at the time he drew the Barn plans. We also believe the Mr. Skidmore moved to Idaho Falls shortly after construction of the Barn. Today, Idaho Falls is home to Skidmore Construction, and while their web site indicates 50 years of experience, we wonder if there could be a link to our W.L. Skidmore. We'll investigate! In the meantime, here is one of the five blueprints Mr. Skidmore drew for the USU Barn.

Interview Excerpt, Jerry Fuhriman, '66

The following is excerpted from an interview by Barn research team member Jeannine Huenemann with local artist Jerry Fuhriman. He is a Cache Valley native, whose dad Wendell Fuhriman took care of the cattle and was a cattle judge on campus. In the 1960s, Jerry was a student at Utah State University and later became a faculty member of Landscape Architecture. He remembers art classes in the Barn:

"I took a class in the Barn....it was either ceramics or sculpture, I could have had two classes but I remember that they were both from [Larry] Elsner. So my memory of the Art Barn is less the structure, and more the personality of the instructor.

"I probably didn't appreciate how great of an artist he was at the time. I remember he was very, very quiet and you would show him your project, and unlike most people he wouldn't just start chattering about it right away. He would say nothing but he would pick it up and he would hold it, and he would caress it with his hands because part of the sculpture was just the tactile, you know the surface and how it felt, and the weight of it, and proportions and so. And then generally he would say something none committal like 'you know you might work on the form a little bit,' which left you wondering what you should do about the form.

"It wasn't until years later, in fact, it's interesting that he was my professor when I was a freshman and he was also on my tenure committee (when I was a professor). So I went a long time knowing him and then eventually collecting his work, and realizing what a terrific artist he was."

Interview Excerpt, Manon Caine Russell, '53

USU Folklore graduate student Jeannine Huenemann interviewed Manon Caine Russell, daughter of George B. Caine, longtime department head and dairy teacher Utah State University. She recalls campus and the barns:

"He'd (Dad would) walk down the hill for lunch.... Well the barns were near the office. The Dairy department was on the north side of the Quad in that building. And the barns were behind that. Campus ended there…. Dad spent his life with the Dairy department at Utah State and it was a very important part of all of our lives. Of course we lived right across from campus, so we were there a lot."

Stories are rolling in!

After a letter to the editor appeared in the Logan Herald Journal a week or so ago requesting that folks share their Barn stories, we've received a bunch of calls that promise to lead to a rich (and often very funny!) set of oral histories. A team of USU graduate students in folklore, history and landscape architecture are following up on tips and contacting callers to set up interviews so we can capture all the great information out there in the minds of former Aggie faculty, staff, students, and members of the broader community. We'll post interview excerpts as we generate them!

Barn, ca. 1962

Taken around 1962, this photo shows the Barn in its early "Art Barn" days. A campus map from the same year refers to the Barn this way. During the transformation of the building from Horse Barn to Art Barn, the sliding south-side doors were removed and replaced by what may have been an orange door, and windows were added at the level of the second floor. Photo courtesy of USU Special Collections.

This photo, taken ca. 1947, shows a whole bunch of barns that once stood where today only "our Barn" remains. The other barns you see in the photo were moved in the mid-1950s to make room for the Taggert Student Center and the other structures of campus as we know it today. Photo courtesy of USU Special Collections, H. Ruben Reynolds collection.

Calling all Barn Stories!

Dear USU Barn lovers:

As the director of the USU Museum of Anthropology, I would like to tell you about an exciting project we have initiated involving oral history collection of stories related to the “Art Barn,” also known as the “Horse Barn” and here, simply “the Barn.”

The Barn is located along 7th North, at the heart of the USU campus and abutting the large surface parking lot used to access the Taggert Student Center and University Inn. Since its construction in 1919, the Barn has been important in the lives of several generations of Aggies, and it has stood as a witness to nearly a century of historic and cultural change at Utah State University. Although a little worse for the wear today, the Barn still embodies our Aggie heritage, and we aim to document that heritage in all its richness and diversity.

We want to hear your stories of the Barn and what it has meant to you through the years. Perhaps you knew it as the Horse Barn in the 1940s, and you curried the manes of the horses housed there. Maybe you are a successful artist who learned to throw pottery or to paint in the Art Barn. Or maybe you were a Barn student recently, when it housed programs such as Psychology and Philosophy—you undoubtedly have stories too!

If the Barn is important to you and you’d like to help us learn about its history and what it has meant to the thousands of Aggies who have passed through its doors, we would greatly appreciate the chance to talk to you. Or rather, to listen to you and whatever you would like to share with us about your experiences.

Eventually (although only with your permission to share anything you tell us!) we will compile the history and personal stories we hear and relate them through museum exhibits and public presentations to interested groups. In the interim, we have started this blog where we will share historic and recent photos, anecdotes, and other nuggets of interest.

To participate in our Barn history and oral history project, please contact Anthropology staff assistant Holly Andrew at 435-797-0219 or Holly.Andrew@usu.edu. If you have photos, documents or anything else you would like to share, Holly can help with that too. And, of course, we invite your comments here at the Barn Blog. The more voices, the merrier!

Bonnie Pitblado