A conical, silvery metal structure with a central vent stack and tiny vertical holes down the side, it sat close to the road among some battered barns and a worn house in tired farmland. Looking for all the world like a punched tin colonial lantern, its diameter was such that two people grasping hands probably would be unable to fully stretch their free arms if they stood inside. Not far from The Hickory Stick in Washington Depot, Connecticut, one of my favorite bookstores, it had piqued my curiosity for years. Finally I stopped to take a look. “It’s a corncrib,” a bearded young man called from the dim recesses of the house’s porch. “Don’t use it for that, no more. Just a little storage.” I’d seen many corncribs in my home state, but never one like this. Mystery solved. But it led to a renewed interest in small buildings that has yet to be satiated. Small in size, I’ve often found them big in stories.
Good things come in small packages, according to proverb. But when it comes to buildings, often the package itself is the best of good. In an age where the footprint and bulk of houses, retail establishments, offices and other uses seem to be continually increasing, smaller structures can be eye-catching. There is a cuteness and curiosity factor often mixed with more than a hint of nostalgia. They can be the stuff of fairytale and Hobbiton imagination. Small buildings include everything from privies to spring houses, mausoleums to agricultural outbuildings, sheds, one-room schoolhouses, and old-time country offices.
Despite the growing size of most buildings, small ones continue to be erected. Contemporary ones are largely in the form of storage structures and utility sheds, animal shelters, and poolhouses that are often prefabricated. Commonly they include nostalgic flourishes like fake strap hinges or crossbuck doors. Preying on attraction to the cute, they’re often prettified with cupolas and weathervanes, shutters and window boxes for flowers. While these
Small buildings often serve significant purposes. A single story, gable-end, brick building in the center of Roxbury is probably about ten feet wide and maybe twice that long, but the tiny structure has gravitas beyond it’s size with a substantial chimney, cornice returns in the gable, and quoins in the corners. The central paneled door is rather formal with pilasters on either side supporting a classical entablature. Now a museum, it was built in 1933 for $800 to store town records. Constructed in a number of rural communities as space in old wooden town halls grew short, such fireproof buildings were built to house deeds and other documents.
It’s a square frame building with a tall glassed-in cupola surrounded by a deck, but this tiny, seemingly flimsy structure was a critical element in home defense during World War II. Civilian
Not every interesting small building can become a museum, and finding new uses is essential to their survival. Two small buildings at the former Climax Fuse Company plant in Avon where fuses were made for explosives are now beauty salons, a function that could not be further from their original purpose as part of a manufacturing facility. Steeply gabled and built of wood and brick, each has an
Due to obvious necessity, outhouses were once the most common small structures. Although indoor plumbing is now almost universal and most outhouses are long gone, there are more that remain than is typically thought. Some are slowly deteriorating with time, but many have been repurposed as garden and storage sheds. Increasingly, antique building museums from colonial homes to nineteenth century schoolhouses are restoring these once essential, disregarded buildings. The Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum in Wethersfield is among those institutions that has repaired these necessities. George Washington slept in one of the museum’s houses while plotting Revolutionary strategy and may also have sat to do other business. The museum’s outhouses are not simply utilitarian, and include wainscoting, crown moldings, raised panel doors and other architectural features and amenities. One is a five-holer, another is a six-holer.
Small buildings can serve not only the most mundane of bodily demands, but spititual needs as well. St Sergius Chapel in the Chureavka Russian Village
Almost comical in its miniature grandiosity is Doctor Hunt’s office on the Windham town green. Built in 1790 in another location as an office behind the local sheriff’s house, the structure is little more than ten feet wide but boasts a wealth of precious classical architectural detail. It has a center paneled door with narrow windows on either side that have wooden lintels carved to look like flat stone. There’s an arched window with tracery in the steep gable of the gambrel roof directly above
Invisible until we start looking, unique small buildings are all around us. They intrigue with their tiny size and often overlarge stories awaiting discovery. Mysteries continually beckon. I recently came upon a single story silo-like building of stone cobbles topped with a moss-splotched concrete dome in a Naugatuck Park. It has a battered wooden door and small boarded-up windows. Was it a concession stand or a ticket booth? I can’t wait to find out.
