The Rebirth of the Birdhouse Barn

 

The Birdhouse Barn in its original location beside Interstate 75 in Dalton, Georgia.

 

This post was adapted from my book Georgia: A Backroads Portrait.

Clark Byers was the man who went all around the country painting “See Rock City” signs on barns. He also invented the Rock City birdhouse, which he intended to use as a mailbox but the U.S. Postal Service wouldn’t let him.

Rock City picked up on the idea and began selling the birdhouses. 1n 1967, they asked Byers if he would paint the barn on the old Tibbs farm in Dalton, right beside I-75, to look like one of the birdhouses. So Clark painted it with the help of his oldest son Freddie. A year later he retired from painting barns. As far as I know this was the only one painted to resemble a birdhouse. At that time the barn could easily be seen from the highway. Later, trees grew up beside the road and made the barn difficult to see unless you knew where to look.

In 2001, as I was selling my book Rock City Barns: A Passing Era at the Prater’s Mill Country Fair near Dalton, a man stopped at my booth and talked with me for a few minutes. It turned out that he was the pastor of a congregation in Dalton, and that they had bought the Tibbs property. He said they hated to destroy the old barn, but they wanted to build a new church on the site.

I suggested that he call Bill Chapin at Rock City. To make a long story short, he did, and Rock City sent a crew to take the barn apart piece by piece. They moved it to a field at the foot of Lookout Mountain and put it all together again.

 For more than 80 years, people have looked at the barns and then gone up the mountain to “See Rock City.” Now you can go up the mountain to Rock City and look down to see a Rock City barn. 

Disassembling the barn in sections.

 

 Re-assembling the barn with many new components at the foot of Lookout Mountain.

 

An eagle's eye view of the Birdhouse Barn from Rock City.

If you enjoy my photographs, you can see more of them in my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/  Looking is free, and, who knows? You might find something you want to keep.

The second edition of my book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia, originally scheduled for December, will be released in June, 2023. 

Photograph and text copyright 2022 David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo -- For the glory of God alone.