Antique & Vintage Postcards

One of Vermont's vanishing architectural treasures commands the frame in this crisp chrome view — a massive round barn in Morrisville, its sixteen-sided ochre clapboard walls sweeping beneath a low polygonal roof of weathered blue-green standing seam, crowned by a delicate wooden cupola that floods the interior with light, the whole structure still actively serving the family farm amid rocky New England pasture and a summer-blue sky piled with cumulus clouds. Round barns were built across New England and the Midwest between roughly 1880 and 1920, championed by agricultural reformers who believed the circular plan improved cattle management and hay storage efficiency; by the time this card was printed only a handful survived the pressures of time, weather, and changing farm economics. Howard Rutkowski's sharp photography captures every weatherboard and window pane of this Lamoille County landmark, published by Green Mountain Color of Cabot, Vermont.