AUBURN – The historic barn formerly situated at the West Auburn Farm site is getting a new life — just not in Maine.
The barn, which used to sit at the Lake Auburn Watershed Neighborhood Association property at 115 North Auburn Road, was built in the early 1800s, association President Dan Bilodeau said Friday.
The association operates the Lake Auburn Community Center and stewards the trails around the property as partners with the Perkins Ridge Sno-Travelers Snowmobile Club.
An early 1800s barn on West Auburn Road was disassembled recently and the frame trucked to Montana, where it is to be repurposed. The Lake Auburn Watershed Neighborhood Association sold the barn to Heritage Restorations, a Texas- and Montana-based company with 25 years of experience transforming barns into homes or other buildings. Submitted photo
The barn is a French-English hybrid, built in the English-style post-and-beam structure with a French floor plan, which puts the doors on the gable end to make additions easier.
The style came about “back in the day,” according to Bilodeau. When the French and English were not killing one another, they sat side by side, had supper together here in Maine and designed a barn that was easy to erect, he said.
For about the past 15 years the association has tried to repurpose the barn but was never able to raise the $200,000 to $300,000 to do it.
Last December, the association put the property up for sale. The city is expected to close on the land within the next month or so, City Manager Phil Crowell said.
But the city was not interested in taking ownership of the barn, Bilodeau said, so the association put out a call for buyers on Facebook Marketplace.
About six months ago, the association accepted an offer of $4,000 from Heritage Restorations, a Texas- and Montana-based company that has 25 years of experience transforming barns into homes or other buildings.
As of last week, the barn’s frame was on a flatbed trailer on its way to Heritage Restorations’ storage facility in Montana.
“The frame is very unique,” Bilodeau said. “People will probably pay $40,000 for that structure to be rebuilt.”
Bilodeau suspects it would be a $200,000-plus investment to restore the frame into the original 36- by 41-foot barn as it was erected around the 1820s-30s.
It would probably cost about half a million dollars to turn the frame into a finished home, he said.
As of Friday, the barn has been completely disassembled and all but one part of it has left Maine.
The association donated the barn’s hoist to the Fryeburg Fair. On Friday morning, volunteers drove the hoist to the Fryeburg fairgrounds, where it will be on display at this year’s fair, which ends Sunday.
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