New-fashioned barn-raising planned in Piatt County

A 90-year-old barn, a landmark on the University of Illinois campus, soon will be moved an entire county west to become a museum of Piatt County history.

That is, if the board of the Piatt County Museum can raise $3 million to do it.

"At first," said Jim Cripe, president of the museum board, "I was very scared. I thought, 'Oh gosh, what an undertaking. Compare it to the $3 million the Champaign library had to raise for their construction program.

"But this has been an unbelievable ride with the barn. It has generated so much excitement, not just in Piatt County but everywhere we go. In Springfield and Bloomington, people come up to us and say, 'Oh, you're the people who are going to move that U of I barn."

The barn is a huge structure at the intersection of Fourth Street and St. Mary's Road, just across the street from the Assembly Hall. Crews from Trillium Dell Timberworks in Knoxville, Ill., have begun work dismantling the 54-foot-tall, 60-by-87 foot structure. The hope is that they will have all the pieces moved to the new museum site on the outskirts of Monticello near Interstate 72, by some time in June. That part, amounting to about $262,000, is paid for. Now comes the really heavy (financial) lifting.

Originally, the museum had planned to build an all-new structure at a cost of between $1.2 to $1.5 million. That was to replace three buildings in downtown Monticello that had fallen into "very poor condition," Cripe said.

Then board members learned that the UI was making the beef barn available as part of its long-range plan to move the South Farms farther south. Museum board members toured several other Midwestern barns that had been turned into museums. That persuaded them to make a nearly $16,000 bid on the building, which beat out other bidders, including one who intended to turn the building into a restaurant and another who wanted to disassemble the building, move it to Colorado, and make it a ski lodge.

"(Museum supporters John Heider and Peg Bargon) came back to us and told us that barns make excellent museums and, in fact, that the other sites in Illinois started out to be just local museums but that there are so many people in this country who are so fascinated with old barn architecture that these other sites in Illinois have become Midwestern tourist

The University of Illinois Beef Barn was a campus landmark and teaching center for 90 years. Now it will be the new home of the Piatt County Museum.       Photo courtesy Jim Cripe

sites," Cripe said. "They have people who come from six or seven states around Illinois. The barns generate a huge amount of interest and a great deal of attention."

And this sturdy beef barn isn't just any old barn. It was design by UI architecture students, Cripe said, and "built like a fortress." It has not only been home for decades to the UI's beef herd but also stored tons of hay. "When it is moved to Monticello it will become the biggest barn in Piatt County," he said. "And outside of grain silos, it will be the tallest building in Piatt County."

The museum board has a four-phase plan for developing the new museum. Phase 1 is to build a new 4,000 square foot structure that will be adjacent to the barn. It will have space for a conference center, library, offices, gift shop and lobby. Phase 3 is the remodeling of the barn interior. Phase 4 is the construction of additional floors inside the barn.

"People are thrilled to death that we're doing this," Cripe said. "I've come to realize that it's going to be easier to raise this $3 million than it would have been to raise the $1.2 or $1.5 million that we initially talked about for the new structure. That would have had a limited interest, probably just in Piatt County. But this barn will have central Illinois interest, if not more."

Fundraising has begun in earnest. Major donors, corporations, and individuals are being contacted. The museum has placed piggy banks at a number of Piatt County businesses in hopes of collecting loose change. The raffle of a Chief llliniwek poster raised more than $1,000. One local woman contributed $80,000. ADM (Archer Daniels Midland) has pledged $25,000. Cripe acknowledges the fund drive may take three to five years. "It's not like we think we'll be done in 2008," he said.

The new museum site is next to the Monticello Railway Museum on Monticello's north side. "Considering that part of our museum is the Rayville train museum, we think that people who like the big trains are going to come across the street and see our little trains," Cripe said. "This is going to help make Monticello a big Midwest tourist destination."

—Tom Kacich

Reproduced by permission of The News-Gazette, Inc. Permission does not imply endorsement by the newspaper.

Editor's note: As. of press time, the UI Beef Barn had been disassembled and moved to a warehouse in Monticello, and is awaiting Phase 2 of the project. Those wishing to contribute to the barn restoration are invited to visit the Piatt County Museum's website at www.piattmuseum.org.

6 |ILLINOIS HERITAGE

Students recognized for website work J ust before semester finals, students in Springfield High School's "Global Information Systems" class received certificates of recognition from the Society for their work with Illinois historical markers on the world wide web. SHS technology facilitator Jenni Dahl, along with social studies teacher John Taylor, co-taught the special class, in which students platted longitude and latitude coordinates for historical markers to create interactive maps for more than 75 Illinois counties. Podcasts from many of the historical markers were later recorded by the students, which encouraged them to learn about Illinois history. Dahl and Taylor were recognized in April at the Society's Annual Awards luncheon, where they shared one of four Olive Foster Teaching Exellence Awards. Pictured top, left to right: Manda Wappel, John Taylor, Kristopher Kertstein, Daniel Baird, Benjamin Mathis, Eric Waldman, Daniel Gosch, Jenni Dahl. Pictured bottom, left to right: Lauren Gibson, Elizabeth Baker, John Houlihan, Shiraz Zaidi, Jenni Dahl

Hostick winners

Orphans and expressways among 2007 Hostick winners

Last month the Illinois State Historical Society and the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency awarded more than $17,000 in scholarships to graduate students working on historical research about the Prairie State. The 2007 King V. Hostick Research Scholarship Review Committee announced the winners of this year's competition, which recognizes the work of national doctoral students conducting groundbreaking research in Illinois history.

The scholarship, named for the late King V. Hostick, a noted Lincoln collector who established the award in his will, funds graduate research at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, the Chicago Museum of History, the Illinois State Archives, and other regional institutions that house significant historical collections.

This year's winners and their dissertation titles are:

• Megan Birk, Lafayette, Indiana
  "At the Mercy of the State: Rural Child Welfare Institutes, 1865-1910"
• Marc Dluger, Chicago
  "A Regimental Community: The Men of the 82nd Illinois Infantry Regiment Before, During, and After the American Civil War"
• Keith Erekson, Bloomington, Indiana
  "Inquiring After Lincoln: The Practice of History in the American Midwest, 1880-1939"
• Julilly Kohnler-Hausmann, Champaign
  "The Rise of a Punishing Logic: The Punitive Turn in American Social Policy, 1968-1980"
• Jason Kozlowski, Champaign
  "Will Globalization Play in Peoria? Class, Race, and Nation in the Global Economy, 1849-1998"
• Matthew C. Sherman, St. Louis
  "Presidential Assassinations: The Failure to Protect Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley"
• Michael Rosenow, Champaign
  "Injuries to All: The Rituals of Dying and the Politics of Death Among Workers, 1877-1918"
• David Spatz, Chicago
  "Expressways and the Transformation of Metropolitan Chicago, 1939-1973."

For more information about the King V. Hostick Awards, go to www.historyillinois.org, or www.illinoishistory.gov.

ILLINOIS HERITAGE| 7