When it was built in the late 19th Century, and farming dominated the prairies of Illinois, the 16-sided Teeple barn was home to dairy cows and haystacks.
In the late 20th Century, the 109-year-old barn, now shuttered and bordered by overgrown weeds, seems out of place among the modern-day landscape of office buildings that surround it at a busy crossroad on the northwestern edge of Elgin.
But it is just that juxtaposition that a group of Kane County agencies want to capitalize on in their recharged campaign to preserve the rare “round” barn and turn it into a hands-on museum devoted to agriculture.
Not only would the proposed Agricultural Educational Center be inherently historical because of its location inside the barn, but would also provide a history of farming-something children don’t always learn these days, said Bob Rohrer, Kane County Farm Bureau manager.
“The majority of people in the U.S. eat products that are produced on this nation’s farms, yet the level of understanding and knowledge of how food is produced and the importance of the farmer is not there among both our urban youth and adults,” Rohrer said.
“That’s why we feel some agricultural education is needed.”
The farm bureau, Kane County Development Department, the Kane County Forest Preserve, and a host of historical preservation and educational organizations, plan to kick off their newly revived campaign Thursday with a presentation of their plans at the barn, which sits at Randall Road and the Northwest Tollway.
After being turned down for a $500,000 federal grant in May, the agencies have resubmitted an application and are trying to bring attention to their plans for the barn, which include hands-on displays about crops, animals and farming equipment, similar to exhibits at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry.
The groups are seeking the funding from the Illinois Department of Transportation, since the agency is charged with disbursing the federal funds for sites affected by highway construction.
The organizations argue that because the property has been cut in half by construction of the tollway, the barn can no longer be used for its original purpose. With the grant money, the agencies would preserve the barn and actually turn the busy roadways to their advantage by providing easy access for visitors.
The $500,000 from IDOT would cover 80 percent of the proposed $630,000 rehabilitation, with the balance coming from as-yet undetermined sources, organizers said.
The barn, built in 1885, was owned by the Teeple family until 1989 when it was sold to Matsushita Electric Corp. of America, which built a large office complex adjacent to the barn.
The company has agreed to deed the 85-foot-wide, 85-foot-tall barn to the Kane County Forest Preserve, should a specific plan for the barn come to fruition, a company official said.
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, the barn has fallen into disrepair. Boards and windows are broken, the inside is strewn with hay and other debris and the adjacent silo is missing its top.
The barn’s first floor contained the milking operation and the large open second floor has a wooden cranelike arm hanging from the ceiling that lifted hay onto a loft.
Brigid Trimble, a member of both the Elgin Heritage Commission and the Kane County Preservation Commission, said she has watched preservationists try to save the barn for four years. She said the project has mainly been held up by lack of money.
Over the years she learned that polygonal barns-those with more than four sides-or what are known as round barns, were built during the 19th Century, but their popularity was short-lived because farmers found that they afforded only slightly extra space despite the large cost to build them.
She said farmers also chose to build them so they would have smaller tax bills, since the tax assessor had a hard time calculating the square footage of the many-sided or round barns. A 16-sided barn is particularly unusual, she said, because most polygonal barns have eight sides.
Mary Nagel, an agriculture coordinator for the Illinois Farm Bureau, said the proposed museum would serve many students learning about farming.
