Twice Recylced

Kevin Durkin • August 8, 2011

Many of the old barns we disassemble and restore for homes were built in the 1800’s with hemlock timbers from New York State. Eastern hemlock (Tsuga Canadensis) is a conifer once widespread in the mountains of the Northeast making up a large portion of the virgin forest. They were massive, straight trees and by counting back their growth rings, we can date these trees back to when they first started growing as early as the 1500’s.


But unlike the eastern white pine that also grew abundantly in the region, hemlock trees were prized primarily for their bark. Hemlock bark is high in tannic acid, which was used to “tan” hides for leather in the early 1800’s.


In order to obtain the bark for the tanning mills, the log cutters and bark peelers would peel off the bark and leave the tree trunks behind as waste by-product of this early American industrial process. Then, in the wake of the tree cutters came farmers who recycled the logs and hand-hewed them into beams for their homes and barns. It is estimated that as many as 70 million hemlock trees were cut for their bark. Not only did the tanners clear cut whole forests, but tanneries also needed water for the tanning process and so were located along streams that they also conveniently dumped their spent tanning solutions into.


The tanning process often included using mercury and many a tanner and hatter, (as hats were made from tanned beaver skins) showed the effect of exposure to this heavy metal on their nervous systems, thus the origin of the phrase “Mad as a Hatter.”


So, not only were these hemlock timbers salvaged from old barns by us in the 21st Century, they were salvaged long ago after they had their bark peeled, so we can say they’ve been “twice recycled.”

The Glen Barn

By Kevin Durkin • February 2, 2023
Built c. 1870, the Glen barn is one of the largest barns ever built in New York State measuring forty feet wide by one hundred feet long. Heritage Restorations has restored over 200 barns from New York, and it is the largest barn that they have ever moved and rebuilt. The history of the Glen barn is a reflection of the great cultural changes that took place during the 1800’s in America.

The Barn Melting Pot

By Kevin Durkin • February 2, 2023
I am often asked the question of where we get our barns. When I reply, “Mostly from New York,” I am then asked, aren’t there good barns in other states?

Old World Meets New

February 2, 2023
More than any other factor, what differentiated American timber framing from its predecessors in the Old World was when the Old World pioneers came to America, they were confronted with a very different building reality in that the materials they had on hand to build with, namely trees, were vastly different from their experience in Europe.

A Heritage Barn Story

February 2, 2023
In the fall of 1609, English explorer Henry Hudson sailed up the river that would later bear his name. He was in search of a westward passage to Asia, but as the water sweetened and became less salty, it became clear to them that this was not the passage they were seeking. It was fine land though, and he claimed it for his patrons, The Dutch West India Company.

Hand Crafted Water Wheel

February 2, 2023
In late 2012 a private golf course near Houston, Texas was in the process of a facility expansion including a new 9 hole-par three surrounding a small lake. The Owner, a creative visionary, imagined this required industrial pump-house building could be a feature rather than a distraction to the otherwise pristine short course.

Barn Raising in Japan

February 2, 2023
Heritage Restorations had the unique opportunity to raise one of our restored historic timber frames in Japan! We dismantled and restored an 1840’s timber frame barn from the tranquil fields of upstate New York and re-erected it in the bustling metropolis of Tokyo, Japan.

The Great Epizootic of 1872

By Kevin Durkin • January 5, 2013
People often ask what interesting things we find in the centuries-old barns we dismantle for our barn restoration business. Well, there are a lot of interesting “things,” like the time we found an old pillowcase hidden in a corner of the first barn that we took down that was full of jewelry from a long-forgotten house burglary, and the time we found the bowling ball that my helper claims is the ball that old Rip Van Winkle used before he drank the potion that put him to sleep for twenty years in the Catskill Mountains.

Mott Gristmill

By Kevin Durkin • January 5, 2013
There is something about gristmills and waterwheels that resonates with just about everyone. The gristmill is an American icon that evokes sentiments of home and community, as is evidenced in the gristmill pictures so many of us have in our homes.

Colonel Drake Saves the Whales

By Kevin Durkin • August 25, 2012
From time to time, in my travels in the Northeast, I pass through the sleepy hamlet of Greenville, New York—just another rural American village on the landscape of formerly thriving agricultural communities. Over the last eighty years, such communities have undergone a relentless depopulating, as generations of young people abandoned their agrarian roots and made their ways to urban centers that offered more “economic opportunity.”

LaRue Barn

By Kevin Durkin • August 25, 2012
We found the LaRue barn through a phone call from a woman in northern New Jersey who had heard about our work of moving and restoring barns. She wanted to know if we would possibly want to move an old barn that was in danger of being demolished to make way for a new suburban development.
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