1379 Coddington Road, Brooktondale

Please Note: if you're stopping to take a look at the Gibian house, it is safer to pull your car off on the east side of the road.

This gambrel-roof barn was converted by owner and architect Stephen Gibian in the 1980s. It was originally built during the last quarter of the nineteenth century and was used to house both dairy cows and plow horses. A note about gambrel roofs: after the Civil War, a mechanism called the hay track was invented. This was a track with a large claw that ran beneath the roof peak (along the ridge beam) and was operated by horse. The large claw was used to stack bales of hay--a time- and labor-saving device for farmers who had previously done the chore by hand. Because hay could be stacked much higher as a result of this device, the roof form was changed from gable to gambrel, which increased volume of barns by up to 50 percent.

LISTEN HERE