DESIGN: BARN BEAUTIFUL

Written by

Shawn Hartley Hancock

Photography by

Paul Lange

A veteran fashion photographer restores a barn in Malden Bridge, New York

Like so many that give character to our rural landscape, the barn on the Lange farm in tiny Malden Bridge, New York, north of Chatham, was unused, desolate, and in dire need of restoration. Paul Lange, the renowned fashion and beauty photographer, and his wife, Jennifer, a petite blonde with a bubbly personality, saw enormous potential in the five-thousand-plus-square-foot structure.

The barn, now restored, overlooks the pool.

“Paul was just so excited about the barn when we first saw the property,” says Jennifer, recalling a crisp Columbus Day weekend some years back. While many barns endure adaptation for reuse as art studios, workshops, and even homes, the Langes wanted their barn to be clean, sound, and in good repair, but ultimately, just a barn.

Paul and Jennifer, who celebrated thirty years of marriage in September, have worked together their entire professional lives. They are no strangers to managing a chaotic photo shoot or a complex construction project, and weren’t the least bit intimidated by the size or scale of the barn. Starting in the late 1970s, as Paul’s career began to take off, the couple supervised construction on three successive photo studios and a few apartments in New York City.

Photographers working at Paul’s level, much like big-league baseball pitchers, initiate the action of the game. Part diplomat (pleasing the client is key, after all), part shepherd (herding the attendant staff of makeup artists, hairdressers, stylists, and, don’t forget, supermodels), and, ultimately, as director of the whole show, Paul steered hundreds of successful shoots where careers, reputations, and millions of dollars were at stake.

With Jennifer as his creative director, Paul shot almost exclusively for Condé Nast publications, including Vogue, Glamour, and Mademoiselle, eschewing more lucrative but often robotic advertising and catalog work in favor of the greater creative satisfaction of editorial assignments. In addition tohundreds of magazine covers, Paul shot on locations all over the world. Yet somehow, the couple managed to maintain a normal life, too, raising two sons, Matthew and Christopher.

Got You Covered: Some of the hundreds of Paul Lange magazine covers.

After thirty years, the couple was ready for a change and came calling in the country. Tall, patient, and graceful, Paul’s sandy blond hair has now turned to a soft shade of gray.

“Finding the farm was a stroke of luck,” Paul says, laughing easily. It was Jennifer who spotted the tiny classified ad for the farm in the New York Times that spurred the couple to drive up from the city one exquisite fall weekend. One look and they fell in love with the Greek Revival farmhouse and the old hay barn about a hundred feet behind it. “We just knew it was right for us,” Jennifer says.

The barn was, sadly, partly rotted, and starting to crumble—just the sort of hands-on challenge the Langes relish. Besides, managing its restoration seemed almost quaint by comparison with the hectic pace and high stakes of the life they had left behind. Just like a photo shoot, they approached the restoration with their usual professionalism, knowing exactly what to change, what to leave alone, and where to draw the line.

“We had two rules,” Jennifer says. “The first was ‘Think like a farmer.’ We kept everything that had a purpose, and reused everything we could.”

“Just like good Yankees,” Paul says.

“The second rule,” Jennifer continues, “was that ‘Everything old would remain original, and everything new would be painted white.’”

After the last farmers called it quits in the 1960s, the barn sat in mothballs through a succession of owners until October 2004, when Paul and Jennifer began a major clean-out, removing animal debris and the typical farm ephemera that has a way of collecting over generations, including old milking stations and troughs. They edited these long-forgotten stockpiles, using some of the old lumber, hinges, and other materials in the restoration.

While Paul attended lectures on area barns and a barn tour sponsored by the Shaker Museum in New Lebanon, New York, Jennifer hunted down books by such barn experts as Elric Endersby and Richard Babcock. They learned that their barn is Dutch-German—a hay barn built in the classic H-shaped German style, the lower cow barn or undercroft following the Dutch design. Once Jennifer and Paul settled on an aesthetic approach to the restoration, they devised a plan and stuck to it, keeping their vision in mind. As construction issues arose (and there were plenty), they were able to make on-the-spot decisions quickly and with confidence.

One of their first and best decisions was hiring Wesley Coon, of Lawrence D. Coon & Son, in Ghent, New York, as general contractor. “Initially, we were just going to prop up the barn, square it, and replace a few rotted sills,” says Coon. With any old building, underlying conditions often reveal themselves only after a restoration is underway. “The more you do, the more you see what needs doing,” Paul says. “Every new layer revealed what each farmer had contributed over the years, and the project just expanded exponentially.”

After underground drainage pipes were installed around the perimeter, Wayne “Bunny” Schermerhorn, Coon’s cousin, squared the barn and replaced the bad members with new white oak. “The horizontal sills and beams were gone, rotted,” Paul says, “but the vertical beams were mostly good.” Coon’s team reinforced the barn’s stone foundation and poured an eighteen-inch concrete knee wall inside to provide extra strength.

“Bunny is truly a genius,” Paul says, “a barn whisperer—literally.” As the barn was raised, Schermerhorn listened for the sounds made by the stress on its shifting timbers, and responded accordingly. “He knew exactly when to stop so the barn could rest before it was stressed again,” Paul says. At one point the hay barn began pulling away from the undercroft (aka the cow barn) on its south side. “You could see six inches of daylight between the two buildings,” Paul says, “and only a half-dozen nails holding them together. Schermerhorn got in the LULL [an all-terrain forklift able to level its load on uneven ground] and pushed the cow barn back in place.” Its beams were then properly reattached with impressive steel anchors.

Much of the barn’s south and west sides had been covered for years by insidious grapevines, which held moisture against the siding, causing it to rot and decay. These exterior sections were re-clad in plywood—a strong and practical choice—and sided with new shiplap that has, by now, weathered to an almost silver finish. The Langes initially considered painting the exterior, but quickly realized they didn’t want “a huge red thing” staring at them from so close to the house.

Top Down: In the big barn overlooking the spacious studio.

Throughout the project, both Jennifer and Paul joined the crew daily and often continued working long after quitting time. “Paul would be there in his work boots every day at six a.m.,” Coon recalls. Schermerhorn’s work on the sills and stone walls took about three months. Coon and the framing team, who showed up soon after New Year’s Day in 2005, finished up another six months later. Aside from looking neater and straighter, the barn’s outward appearance hasn’t changed much since the restoration, which is just fine with the Langes. Coon says with pride, “The barn turned out beautiful.”

The Langes preserved the two giant hay trolleys that hang in the main barn and were equally adamant about saving the barnboard ceiling and roof rafters that had browned to a rich patina. But the barn needed a new roof, which would inevitably interfere with this expanse of ceiling. The only economical solution was to add an entire second roof over the existing one.

Virtually all the barn’s wood floors, however, were beyond rescuing. For the barn’s small workshop, Coon ran old boards, salvaged during the initial clean-out, through a wood planer for uniform thickness, and installed them over radiant-heat coils. The floor of the main barn was rotted and cracked from age and overuse, too. Coon ordered newly milled planks for this area and left them in place to dry, un-nailed—a smart move considering the boards shrunk more than seven inches before they were installed five months later.

The hay barn has only one main entrance for wagons, a twelve-foot-square rolling door that was worn out and rotted pre-renovation. Its replacement needed to provide a secure, weather-tight seal while still looking like it belonged on a barn. The Langes turned to architect and friend Peter Coan of Redroof Design in Chatham, New York, who designed enormous glass doors that run the height of the opening, and to Todd Siemers, president and owner of S & S Fabrication in Ghent, to fabricate and install them.

Each section of glass—there are four total—weighs upward of a thousand pounds. Set within a heavy steel frame, they are attached to each other by the sort of pin hinges used on bank safes. They honor the scale of the original opening, provide steady north light, and fold back easily when maneuvered. Meanwhile, new wood was used to fabricate a replacement for the old rolling door. Installed on the original metal rollers, it rumbles closed over the glass, preserving the barn’s integrity. Custom-made screens from John Fitzner in Schenectady, New York, a maker of canvas boat and car covers, hang loosely outside the glass doors—velcroed to the steel door frame, they zip, tent-like, to keep flying critters out in the warmer months.

Before the restoration, the ceiling in the cow barn or undercroft, while fine for cows, wasn’t high enough for people to stand upright. Coon and his crew excavated two additional feet to gain adequate headroom. Fortunately, the old floor was made of what Paul calls farmer’s concrete. “One-inch thick in some places, three inches in others,” he says, “so it was easy to break up.” Before pouring the new floor in this space, however, the team added concrete footings and extra beams to provide adequate strength to the structure. The undercroft is beautifully reinvigorated now, its row of charming windows at just the right height for looking out over the rolling south meadow.

With their move to the country, Paul shifted the focus of his work from high-profile magazine layouts to fine-art photography, with an emphasis on portraiture and landscapes. His larger-than-life graphic flowers, photographed as winsomely anthropomorphic personalities, and his classic bird portraits, notable for their breathtaking details, have been included in exhibits throughout the northeast over the last two years. His first book of photographs, Langescapes: A Year in the Garden, is slated for publication in 2010.

Back at the barn, the Langes’ restoration rules have proven prophetic. Inside, the contrast of old and new, soft brown and shiny white, balance each other and give the barn new energy within its old spirit. It stands taller, neater, and stronger, but most important, Paul says, “the barn is still a barn.” [October, 2009]

Shawn Hartley Hancockis a freelance writer living in Spencertown, N.Y.

THE GOODS

Paul Lang

Malden Bridge, N.Y.

Lawrence D. Coon & Son

116 Soller Heights Rd.

Ghent, N.Y.

Redroof Design

2 Main St.

Chatham, N.Y.

S & S Fabrication

Ghent Industrial Park