“Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn: The Connected Farm Buildings of New England”
Through architecture unique to northern New England, this illustrated talk focuses on several case studies that show how farmers converted their typical separate house and barns into connected farmsteads. Thomas Hubka's research in his award-winning book, Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn: The Connected Farm Buildings of New England, demonstrates that average farmers were, in fact, motivated by competition with farmers in other regions of America, who had better soils and growing seasons and fewer rocks to clear. The connected farmstead organization, housing equal parts mixed-farming and home-industry, was one of the collective responses to the competitive threat.
About the presenter:
Thomas Hubka is a Professor Emeritus from the Department of Architecture at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where he taught for over 20 years. Professor Hubka’s presentation focuses on the historical development of New England’s farm architecture. He is best known for his book: Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn: The Connected Farm Buildings of New England, published by The University Press of New England, for which he received the Abbott Lowell Cummings Award for the best book in American vernacular architecture.
He has also written an award-winning book about Polish wooden synagogues, titled: Resplendent Synagogue: Architecture and Worship in an Eighteenth Century Polish Community; and his latest book about America’s popular housing is titled: How Working-Class Homes Became Modern, 1900-1940.
Professor Hubka is currently living in Portland, Oregon where he lectures in the Historic Preservation Program at the University of Oregon, and gives architectural tours of Portland’s neighborhoods. He returns each summer to his brother’s (connected) farm in Bridgton, Maine.
