Excellence Award Spotlight: Still Standing: The Barns of J.T. Wells & Sons
Still Standing promotional graphic.
Still Standing: The Barns of J.T. Wells & Sons strategically highlights the history, heritage, and present-day plight of Western New York’s agriculturally and architecturally significant Wells barns. This television documentary, produced by Churchbell Creative, LLC., creatively explores ways that remaining barns can regain their relevance through adaptive reuse while fostering community engagement in their preservation before these barns disappear from the landscape entirely due to development, decay, and obsolescence. The documentary is being offered for free to all NYS Public Television Stations courtesy of Rochester-based WXXI Public Media. The League is honored to recognize Still Standing with a 2024 Excellence in Historic Preservation Award.
“The barn owners profiled in the documentary represent a diverse community united by a common design,” said Katie Andres, Still Standing Co-Producer. “Documenting how these owners have collectively honored the heritage, character, and architectural integrity of their own barns while adapting them in completely different ways has been incredible.”
Drone photo of a Wells Barn along a country road, courtesy of Churchbell Creative, LLC.
The Preservation League of NYS included Wells Barns on the 2018-2019 Seven to Save list of endangered historic sites, recognizing the significance of Wells Barns as a uniquely New York example of a building type that is threatened and rapidly disappearing throughout the state. Wells Barns were created by John Talcott Wells, Sr., the son of a prominent barn builder in the southwestern section of Monroe County. Wells quickly realized the shortcomings of typical post-and-beam construction for agricultural structures. After a series of experiments and design modifications, he developed an ingenious truss system that strengthened the barn’s interior framing system while simultaneously creating open space in the upper sections of the structure. In 1889 he received a patent for this Wells Patented Truss. Wells Barns are sometimes referred to as “Country Cathedrals” because the resulting appearance of a Wells Truss is somewhat comparable to a Gothic Arch on the interior. Only found in a small section of Western New York, Wells Barns are difficult to identify from the exterior, but they almost always possess gambrel roofs and a double window with a decorative lintel underneath the gable.
Still Standing: The Barns of J.T. Wells & Sons was produced by Katie Andres & Jill Kuchman, Co-Owners, Churchbell Creative, LLC.