The Odd Experiment
By John T. Hanou
The following is an excerpt from one of my chapters in my proposed book, A Round Wisconsin, Round Barns in the Badger State, which I hope to complete by the end of 2020 and hope to have it published by either the University of Wisconsin Press or the Wisconsin Historical Society. I am the author of A Round Indiana, Round Barns in the Hoosier State, Purdue University Press, 1993. A second edition of the book is planned for the fall of 2020.
I chose this excerpt for this blog, because it portrays some unique Madison, Wisconsin history and new findings from Professor Franklin H. King that up until now, few have known about. Enjoy!
All Rights Reserved, John T. Hanou, May 8, 2020, email: jthanou@yahoo.com, cell: 410-279-3818
“To Prof. King of the Wisconsin Experimental Station belongs the credit of introducing the cylindrical barn.”
The Circular Thinking of Franklin H. King
Spearheaded by professor Franklin H. King of the Agricultural Experiment Station at the University of Wisconsin, King was studying the merits of, and conducting the initial engineering research on, the circular silo. At that time, use of the silo for agricultural purposes was in its infancy. Researchers were only beginning to realize the silo’s importance and the benefits it offered in farm planning and caring for livestock. Farmers valued the silo’s capacity to store ample amounts of silage and other feedstock, which provided the farmer’s livestock with consistent, planned rationing throughout the year.
Photo: Farmers of forty centuries; or, Permanent agriculture in China, Korea and Japan, By F. H. King, D. Sc., privately published by Mrs. F. H. King, 1911; Signature from King’s personal notebook on silos, Steenbock Library archives, Madison, Wisconsin (click to enlarge)
The prolific Professor Franklin Hiram King (1848-1911) was a “Darwinist,” a “Huxleyist,” geologist, entomologist, physicist, ornithologist, organic chemist, meteorologist, ventilation specialist, soils expert, mechanical engineer and more. The research Franklin King conducted on circular silos led him to design a true-circular barn that became the prototype for future round barns.
We know that professor King did not originate the round silo; instead he did “make it popular and helped bring it into general use. King saw that farmers were having trouble with ensilage spoiling in the corners of square silos and concluded that the round type was the only one to build.[1] His bulletin telling how to build round wooded silos was the first on the subject.[2] He also made many other studies on silos.”[3] The results and plans he presented became known as the King, or Wisconsin, all-wood circular silo. While the design of earlier silos made them hard to pack and allowed too much spoilage, the round silos avoided these problems and offered farmers a cost savings on the construction.
By the late 1880s and into the 1890s and the early 1900s, interest in Elliott Stewart’s octagonal barns were beginning to wane, King started another movement. His research was not limited to silos; he also had a keen interest in barns. In January 1889, his brother, Charles E. King, asked Franklin to construct a barn, including a silo that would economically shelter eighty cows and ten horses, with feeding and cleaning alleys in front and behind. Instead of constructing a more traditional rectangular barn, Franklin decided on a 90-foot-diameter round barn with his all-wood circular silo positioned in the center. When completed, C. E. King’s barn was the first of a generation of true-circular silo barns, characterized by balloon-frame construction,[4] horizontal wood siding, and a conical roof that required support posts arranged in a circular pattern around the central silo. Most of these barns had a ramp leading to the second floor. Some, however, were built as bank barns— that is, a barn built on the side, or bank, of a hill. Such a barn gave the farmer easy access to the second floor.
King’s plan had three major advantages: 1: Effective Ventilation,[5] 2: Control of Temperature and 3: Economy of Construction. He went on to state “Another great advantage which the consolidated barn possesses over several small, scattered structures, and especially where the feeding is done from a central point, as it is the plan in question, is the large saving of time which makes it possible in feeding and caring for the animals.” [6]
This sketch of King’s barn clearly shows the ground-level entrance as well as the ramp leading to the second-floor hay mow.
Drawing: From Practical Hints about Barn Building (Chicago: J. H. Sanders Publishing Co., 1893)
In these cutout views of the interior of King’s barn, the all-wood central silo and the sixteen posts that support the conical roof are readily visible. Elevation: From Seventh Annual Report (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment Station, 1890)
A photograph of the Charles E. King barn, which was built on his farm near Whitewater in Walworth County, is not known to exist; however, this photograph appeared on page 369 of “A Text Book of the Physics of Agriculture, by F.H. King, Second Edition, Privately published 1901. It is highly possible that this is the barn. King’s barn burned down in 1924.
Franklin King barn design is highly recognizable with its conical roof topped with a round cupula. Built in 1895 it was moved to a new site in 2006 about a half mile to the south. The new site is now called “The Round Barn at Willow Springs ‘Not Just a Venue,’ the barn was built by August Tisch and acquired by Willow Springs from Carl Christian. It was moved to a new site in 2006 and painstakingly restored from its deteriorated state. Up till 1940 it was home to 32 milking cows, 8 draft horses, and a collection of other agricultural animals and equipment….” The barn is 92-feet in diameter and 20-feet from stone wall to eaves. Photo from Northern Wisconsin, a hand-book for the homeseeker, Henry, W. A. Marathon County Tisch barn 1896. Photo 2: JTH – 2020. (click photos to enlarge)
So successful was this plan that King promoted it in numerous agricultural publications between 1890 and 1900, including all six editions of his own popular textbook on agriculture.[7] This author’s research suggests that a minimum of 18 barns were built in Wisconsin from 1889 to 1905. King’s true-circular design also found its way into Midwestern other states, with at least two in Indiana and three or four in each state: Iowa, Minnesota and Illinois.
Franklin King became famous for the ventilation system that he designed for round as well as rectangular structures. The “King System of Ventilation” of ventilation is still in use today.
Plan from King Textbook of Physics, 1901, page 364.
Here is a 1920 ad by the King Ventilating Co. promoting the “King System of Ventilation.”
Ad from The field illustrated, March 1920, page 230.
The Odd Experiment
Always thinking ahead, Professor King saw the need to improve barn efficiency by inventing a new design to eliminate the sixteen roof posts as noted in his brother Charles barn. In other words, he wanted to figure out a way to construct an open, self-supporting roof, which would allow the hay loft to have much more unobstructed space, which in turn would improve the efficiency of feeding animals.
So, in 1892, King took on the task of how to support the roof in the case there was no silo placed in the center of the barn. “… having a need for a small barn on his own premises (in Madison), he built a round barn twenty-eight feet in diameter. Of course it contained no silo and was thus without means of carrying the upper ends of rafters. Therefore a novel feature was introduced which reduced the weight of the roof, and eliminated rafters entirely. Instead of roof boards, which were tapered by sawing ordinary lumber from corner to corner, where supported on three horizontal wooden hoops. The hoops were made by setting on edge six thicknesses of pine and nailing them together in rings of desired sizes. These were supported from below only until the roof boards were all in place. Then since every board in the roof was nailed to every circular girder under it and all pressure was equally distributed through the roof boards themselves to the circular well, the temporary staging was removed leaving the roof literally self supporting.”[8]
“The Odd Experiment” In 1892 Professor King built a 28-foot diameter barn on his farm in Madison – the first using the so-called circular purlin plate to make the barn’s roof “self supporting.”
The Country Magazine dated October 1919, page 184 “Why Is ‘The Little Round Barn’” by Elmer Meacham.
Here is a 1912 photo showing educational garden plots and King’s round barn near the Harry Russell (left) and Franklin King homes in Madison. The Franklin King home (and probably the barn) was destroyed in 1955 to make room for a parking lot at Babcock Hall on the UW, Madison campus. The stock pavilion is in the upper right corner.
Photo: from Cultural Landscape Inventory, December 2005, (Revisions December 2011) Quinn Evans, Architects, University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Landscape Architecture, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, Division of Facilities Planning and Management
An example of a circular purlin plate hoop. Note the 1” x 6” boards (that were about 20’ long) that have been staggered, bent and nailed together to form a circular plate. Think of it like a Hula Hoop, but it was an exceptionally strong structure that allowed the roof to be self-supporting.
Photo: JTH – 2019.
Built in 1905, this is the A. Breitenstein round barn located near Arnot in Stockton Twp. in Portage County. It’s one of the last true-circular barns built in Wisconsin after a Franklin King design. An article in the Stevens Point Journal dated 9/19/1905, page 1 reported: “The barn has apparently many advantages and if found satisfactory in practice others will probably be erected on the same principle." However, another round barn design with more hay mow space and an unobstructed loft would soon supplant the King design.
King’s “Odd Experiment” was a novel idea – one that no one had ever thought about before; however, King was a man with many missions. During the remainder of the 1890s, he had his hands full working on other construction types, and soils, irrigation, running an agricultural department, etc. The bottom line? The self-supporting conical roof idea for a true-circular barn was there for the asking and it would be another eight years after King’s “Odd Experiment” to make the mainstream.
But that’s another story!!
[1] In 1887 King visited 58 farms with silos, took notes and developed his ideas on round silo construction. Source: Franklin H. King personal notebook located in Steenbok Library Archives, Madison, Wisconsin.
[2] “The construction of silos,” Bulletin 28, University of Wisconsin, Agricultural Experiment Station, Madison, Wis., 1891, By F. H. King.: University of Wisconsin.
[3] “Wisconsin at Head of Silo Procession – Had one of First Silos and Has Led in Numbers Ever Since, Waunakee Tribune, Waunakee, Wisconsin, July 10, 1924, Page 3
[4] Franklin H. King, “Plan of a Barn for a Dairy Farm,” Seventh Annual Report (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment Station, 1890). As described by Roger L. Welsch in “Nebraska’s Round Barns,” Nebraska History 51 (1970), 51, balloon-frame construction is “a form of framing in which the weight of the roof and upper floors is borne by a series of closely spaced light weight, upright studs, each linking the plate and the first floor sill. Almost all modern frame buildings are of balloon construction, the roof being carried by vertical two-by-fours in the walls.”
[5] King’s research became the King system of ventilation, still in use today.
[6] Ibid, King pages 106-108.
[7] The plan appeared in Franklin H. King, “Plan of a Barn for a Dairy Farm” (cited above), 183; Hoard’s Dairyman, Apr. 19, 1895 and Mar. 26, 1897; J. H. Sanders, Practical Hints about Farm Building (Chicago: J. H. Sanders Publishing Co., 1893), 100-101; Breeder’s Gazette, Apr. 7, 1897); Farm Buildings (Chicago: Breeder’s Gazette, 1916), 126, 129; and Franklin H. King, A Text Book of the Physics of Agriculture, 6th ed. (Madison, Wis.: Franklin H. King, 1914), 341-42.
[8] The Country Magazine dated October 1919, page 184 “Why Is ‘The Little Round Barn’” by Elmer Meacham.