Corn House (ca. 1825)
In the early to mid-19th century, corn houses or “corn cribs” were a necessity on Delmarva farms. These structures were specifically designed and built to dry and store ears of corn used for animal feed.
Because it contains a lot of moisture, corn needs to be thoroughly dried before it can be used for feed. Corn houses were designed to allow air to circulate freely around ears of corn and therefore dry the corn more thoroughly. A typical corn house can be recognized by its sidewalls which slant outward from the floor to the roof giving it a V-shaped appearance. The corn house floor was covered with boards laid an inch or so apart to allow air to circulate. Because drying or dried corn presented a temptation to rodents, farmers typically built their corn houses on posts situated 2 – 3 feet above the ground. The posts were covered with tin pans placed upside down to keep rodents from climbing up the pole and into the crib.
Corn houses were generally small (6 – 8 feet wide and 10 – 20 feet long). A single farmer might build several small corn houses, rather than one larger corn house, with the belief that the corn would dry more evenly and faster in smaller, individual, buildings. By the early 1900s, corn houses were being replaced by silos and most (corn houses) fell into disuse.
The Museum’s corn house is believed to have been constructed around 1825 and was originally located in the area of Cross Keys, Dagsboro Hundred, Delaware. The building was donated to the Museum by Mr. Donald L. Ward and was moved to the Museum’s Village grounds in 1986.
The cedar shake roof on the corn house roof was expertly replaced by Cedar Rock Construction (Harrington, DE) in January 2022, breathing new life into this historic structure.
