While they were not raised in a barn, employees of Towamencin Township, Pa., now are working in one. Because of space constraints, township officials decided to build a new municipal center on a 14-acre farmstead one mile from the location of the old municipal center.

The new center consists of three buildings: a mid-19th century restored barn housing the township offices, a police station and a meeting hall. The center has a footprint of 20,460 square feet in the middle of farmland formerly owned by Roy Rittenhouse, a local farmer.

“The Rittenhouse family owned the land for a little more than 100 years,” Township Manager John Granger explains. “It was important to them, I think, to preserve the farmstead as opposed to selling it to a developer. The land was partly a gift and partly a purchase.”

The township purchased the farmstead largely with grants from the Montgomery County Open Space Preservation Program. “We were able to use some of that fund because about half of [the parcel] is preserved as open space. Some of it is actually farmed, and [the old farm pond] was restored to a wetland condition,” Granger says.

The township's board of supervisors wanted the site to be an historic asset for those who live in the area. As a result, the board hired experts on American colonial farming and architecture to work on the reconstruction project.

More than 80 percent of the original barn timber was reused for the center, and many of the architectural and structural elements were restored. “In all likelihood, it was more expensive to reuse the existing timber because several hundred pieces had to be inspected several times before it could be certified for reuse. The timber was dismantled, marked, tagged, surveyed and then stored outside under tarps,” Granger says.

While many of the original materials were used in the reconstruction of the barn, contractors still had to use some modern construction techniques. For example, a hayloft had to be converted to offices. “You don't need a hayloft for a municipal building, but you do need a second floor for offices,” says Fred McCaffrey, representative for Towamencin Township. “A loft wouldn't have been sturdy enough [for offices, so the second floor] has a steel frame. [The project is] not a strict re-creation.”

In addition to representing the agrarian history of the area, the new center is an educational resource. The site provides an opportunity for school children to see what a working farm looks like, to see how it operates and to learn about their cultural heritage.