Historic Barns Presentation - Wed, Feb 22, 7:00 p.m. - hosted by Historic Resources Committee
Join us in the West Vincent Township Building Meeting Room – Light Refreshments Served
How many old barns can be seen along the roads and highways of West Vincent Township?
The Historic Resources Committee is still counting and learning their stories. We are blessed with an abundance of beautiful barns in the township and Chester County.
Please RSVP and join us to learn about the different types and ages of these iconic structures.
To prepare for the discussion, take a drive around the roads from French Creek to West Vincent's irregular border to the north. Share with us how many barns you have counted. Don't forget to include barns that have been repurposed as dwellings or storage facilities!
Pictured (l to r): Burning Tree Farm (St. Matthew’s Road), John Ralston Barn (St. Matthew’s Road), John & Esther Lewis Farm (Underground Railroad station, 1837), Clevenstine Barn (Pughtown Road), George & Phoebe Hipple Farm, John Fertig Barn (Birchrun Road)
Presenter Biographies
Robert J. Wise, Jr. – Master of Science in Historic Preservation (University of Pennsylvania 1993), Master of Management in Business Administration (Penn State 1993), graduate of Dickinson College. Bob has over 30 years’ experience in historic preservation and cultural resources management services, working as Senior Planner, Historic Preservation at the Brandywine Conservancy’s Environmental Management Center; a Principal Senior Architectural Historian at Richard Grubb & Associates, Inc. (RGA); and as the Principal of Wise Preservation Planning LLC.
His expertise includes local, state, and federal regulatory compliance, intensive level historic architectural surveys, historic structure reports, National Register and National Historic Landmark nominations, NHPA Section-106 consultation, battlefield preservation, site interpretation, resource protection ordinances, municipal planning assistance, façade conservation easements, and grant writing.
He has prepared or co-prepared over 30 National Register and National Historic Landmark nominations with nearly 3,000 historic resources and has documented tens of thousands of historic resources through the completion of county- and municipal-wide historic resource surveys.
Bob volunteers on several boards to share his experience with the community. He is an early member and former president of the Chester County Historic Preservation Network, a county-wide historic preservation advocacy and information organization with over 700 members. In 2001, he helped establish the Tredyffrin Historic Preservation Trust to save the circa 1782 Jones Log Barn and promote historic preservation. He has served on the boards of the Eagles Mere Conservancy, the Open Land Conservancy of Chester County, and the Betsy Ross House in Philadelphia. He now chairs the West Vincent Township Historical Commission and serves on the boards of the Tredyffrin Historic Preservation Trust and the Berwick Stuart Tank Memorial Association, the latter that he also helped establish.
Seth Hinshaw - M.A. History, University of North Carolina-Greensboro and M.S. in Historic Preservation, University of Pennsylvania. Seth has over 20 years of experience as a building documentation specialist in Chester County and works throughout the Mid-Atlantic. He also serves on the Historic and Architectural Review Board (HARB) in Pottstown, Pennsylvania.
Seth has documented thousands of buildings in historic resource surveys and related projects throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey; and, he has successfully co-prepared 22 National Register of Historic Places nominations (two as National Historic Landmarks). His property documentation projects have spanned 11 states.
He also lectures on a wide variety of historic architecture-related topics, including residential architecture, colonial religious architecture, and barns, and has helped train members of historical commissions and HARBs throughout southeastern Pennsylvania.