Last winter, Ken Zinssar and his brother were working on a
car in a wing of the old barn they’d turned into a weekend
auto shop. Suddenly, they heard a loud bang, and the struc-
ture was beginning to shake.
A main corner post of the barn, which was built around
1780 in New York’s upstate Schoharie County, had snapped.
Zinssar and his wife, Doreen, realized they couldn’t keep the
place up, so they called Heritage Restorations and said they
were ready to sell. “There’s a little pang, but it’s going to col-
lapse otherwise,” Ken says. Doreen adds: “We’re excited to see
it go have a new life.”
Since 1997, Heritage Restorations has moved and rede-
signed about 400 barns, for as much as $5 million apiece.
Often it’s just the interiors of the barn that can be reused,
as the exteriors are too weathered or incomplete. Many
come from New York’s Catskill Mountains region, where
porches sag from grand old homes not far from scrap yardswithnameslikeHubcapHeaven.Inthe18thandintothe
19thcentury, the Schoharie Valley boasted some of the rich-
est dairy- and farmland in the colonies. Then the Erie Canal
opened, shifting American agriculture farther west. Instead
of crops, the old infrastructure was left to grow moss.
These days the valley, and a surrounding swath of upstate
New York and New Jersey, is producing treasure again: Its der-
elict old barns are finding second lives as star getaways, ranch
houses, or wedding venues. Hundreds of these centuries-old
outbuildings are being dismantled and set up again, entirely
reimagined in places as far away as New Zealand and Japan.
Rustic is in. Old wood is hot. A DIY Network show,
Barnwood Builders, has run for eight seasons. But it’s Heritage
founder Kevin Durkin who’s responsible for many American
barns’ highest-profile moves. “We live in such a tumultuous
world—socially, economically, politically,” he says. “When
you wake up in the morning and there are 300-year-old62
GOIN’ COUNTRY! BloombergPursuits March 23, 2020Rustic American farm buildings find fresh homes—and uses—
in distant corners of the world. By Lynn Freehill-MayeOld Barns, New Life
A Colorado ski home
converted from a New
York Dutch barn built
in about 1770