Word: babcock
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...years since Richard Babcock first mounted his pickup truck to rescue a colonial barn in distress, snatching a comely example of Scottish extraction, circa 1710, from the jaws of damp rot in Lenox, Mass. After eight months he had tenderly transformed her timbers into a family home in New Marlboro, 18 miles south. Thus was ignited the peculiar passion that, 75 recyclings later, still drives the master builder. "I'm an evangelist, truth to tell," he says. "Some men are called to save souls. I was called to save barns...
This cool spring afternoon, the salvation site is suburban. One hundred yards from the Merritt Parkway, 1½ rush hours from Manhattan, the frame of a born-again Babcock barn climbs skyward in Fairfield, Conn. After eight years in their 200-year-old farmhouse, Advertising Executive Rick Baker and his wife Cathy called on Babcock to erect a colonial barn addition, which will hold a new living room and a cluster of bedrooms. They wanted more space, but they also wanted to respect the region's history...
...roof, the frame of foot-thick oak timbers has the precise, angular grace of a Victorian railway bridge. It is bound by hand-hewn pegs to a 20-ft. by 30-ft. rectangle. Inside this architectonic web freshly spun along the rear of the Bakers' blueberry-shingled farm house, Babcock, 50, in red plaid shirt and worn, blue work pants, ministers to a most ungraceful tangle of rope and wood...
...sapling, a block and tackle suspended from a fork at its apex, yards of thick manila rope woven through an assortment of pulleys and a stout ashwood capstan. Today it will raise the final gable, a 20-ft.-long triangle of beams on which roof boards will later rest. Babcock casually knots the free end of the rope around the beams, then signals his crew of four. Under their weight, the groaning capstan turns. The rope creaks. The beams refuse to budge. Babcock fiddles with pulleys, then applies a greasing of Ivory soap where rope meets capstan. "We call this...
Around this frame of a 1690s French sheep barn, Babcock will build walls of pine siding and insulation and a shingled roof. Protected from the elements, the ancient timbers become an indoor exhibition. The entire project will cost $80,000--something of a bargain, Babcock reckons, for such historic shelter...