Description of Historic Place

The Button Barn is a Municipal Heritage Property located in the Rural Municipality of Glen Bain on a farmstead 11 kilometres west of the Hamlet of Glen Bain. Built in 1917, the property features a large, wood-frame, gambrel roof barn with a second storey drive-in hay loft.

Heritage Value

The Button Barn is valued as a well-preserved early twentieth century barn. Constructed in 1917, the barn is notable for its second storey drive-in hay loft, a less common design than hay loft access through the end walls. The interior of the barn also survives in its original condition with the ground floor featuring a central aisle lined by livestock stalls. The barn was one of the earliest in the area wired for electricity and exhibits a high degree of integrity, retaining its wooden drop siding, cedar-shingle roof and sliding doors.

The heritage value of the Button Barn also lies in its commemoration of pioneer settlement in the Glen Bain area. The barn was constructed on one of the area’s earliest homesteads, that of William David and Lulu Button, established by William in early 1909. The barn was built in the same year as the Button’s extant farmhouse, testifying to the success achieved by area pioneer farmers at the time. The barn remains in the Button family on its original homestead site.

Source:

Rural Municipality of Glen Bain No. 105 Bylaw No. 4/2000.

Character-Defining Elements

The heritage-value of the Button Barn resides in the following character-defining elements:
-those elements which relate to the architecture of the exterior, including the rectangular two-storey plan, the cedar-shingled gambrel roof with louvered rooftop ventilators , the hay loft’s second storey, drive-in access, the earthen ramp with fieldstone retaining walls to the second-storey hay loft, the large east and west elevation doorways, the battened sliding doors, the square four-pane windows;
-those elements which relate to the architecture of the interior, such as the open character of the hay loft, the centre-aisle plan of the first storey lined by wooden livestock stalls.