The Beat of a Different Drummer

MAX STEINKE 12-SIDED BARN, west of St. John, Washington

Nobody had to tell Max Steinke that this was strange. Maybe a little foolhardy. His wife Ida had her doubts. Even his father had cautioned against it. But at this moment in 1915, even if someone had tried to talk him out of it, Max would have turned a deaf ear. His mind was set on building a very special barn right here on Cottonwood Creek in Washington state-- a round barn like the ones he had seen in his native Minnesota. Never mind that his neighbors all had traditional rectangular barns, or that he already had a rectangular barn of his own on the property.

What mattered was that Max tightly clutched a drawing of a round barn design that an unknown draftsman had sketched to his exact wishes. The barn was actually not round, but dodecagonal (12-sided), but it appealed to Steinke because of the convenience of the central feeding area and spacious stalls for harnessing draft horses. He hired a carpenter, and enlisted his younger brother Walter Steinke to help build this "excellent round thing". But, before starting, he tore down the old rectangular barn so that he could use its lumber for roof sheeting on the new structure. Maybe it was also a statement that there was no turning back.

A year later, and at a total cost of $1700, the barn was completed...and it turned out to be a perfect complement to the 345 acre wheat and barley farm. With its dome roof towering sixty feet high, and 9-foot high reinforced concrete walls, it quickly became a local attraction. Twelve stalls accomodated several milk cows and the draft horses he kept for plowing, harrowing and harvesting. Feed bins faced outward from the central hub. The trend-setting barn became the prototype of other round barns in Washington, and has been serviceable for almost 90 years.

The times have changed, but the Steinke barn remains structurally much the same as in 1916, although its roof is tattered and missing shingles. Gone are the draft horses, replaced by tractors in 1935, and the barn was later altered to better accomodate beef cattle that had replaced the horses. Today it is used in this fully operational wheat ranch for feed storage for cattle.. It is on the National Register of Historic Places as a "structural masterpiece" that has outlasted nearly all other barns like it, serving as "one of the outstanding structural landmarks on the landscape of the Palouse." Max would have liked that.

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