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Old
Space Rebarn
Fort Wayne, Ind.-Area
Dentist Gives New Life to Century-Old Barn.
By Linda Lipp
of the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel
December 18, 2000
To most
people who drove past it, the decrepit, decaying old barn just off
Lahmeyer Road part of the former Busche Homestead was probably a
good candidate for the wrecking ball.
But to L. Gary
Painter, the century old barn was just what he had always wanted to house
his Fort Wayne area dental offices
"I'm a farm
boy," said Painter, an Indiana a University dental school graduate who
grew up in Hoagland, "I just love old farms."
Painter's focus
is on cosmetic dentistry and dental reconstruction, which probably helped
him look past the building's problems and see its possibilities.
It's just that
sort of vision, accompanied by healthy doses of patience, optimism and
cash, that is required to restore, renovate and adapt an old building for
a new use, a practice known to preservationists as "adaptive reuse."
"Adaptive reuse
is one of the key things in historic preservation,” said Angela Quinn,
executive director of ARCH, a local preservation group. “But I think that
there's much more of a creative leap involved in turning a barn into a
dentist's office than in restoring an old building downtown for a similar
use "
The 4 acre
Busche farm homestead was deeded to Ernest Busche in 1914 in return for
the work he'd done on the Erie Canal. The barn was built near the
end of the 19th century, but the land hasn't been farmed since 1962 and
the barn hadn't been used in years. The floors were rotted, the roof leaked,
boards were missing from the exterior, and it was littered with an assortment
of rusting old faun equipment, some of which dated to the horse and buggy
days.
Still, the
barn had good bones, and Painter knew its solid structure could serve as
the framework for the modem offices he envisioned.
For early advice,
Painter went to Barn Again, an Indianapolis based organization that helps
people find and develop new uses for old barns. Then, to make it happen,
he enlisted the help of Beverly Hills dentist turned architect Chris Kennedy.
"He has a very
different approach. He comes in and basically lives with you for a while,
gets to know you, your likes and dislikes, goes to family events, before
he even starts to design anything," Painter said
One of the
first things that Kennedy learned about Painter was that his approach to
dentistry is out of the ordinary. There would be no need for a waiting
room, for example, because Painter sees only one patient at it time.
And in addition
to the modern dental chair and equipment, Painter's exam and treatment
room needed to include a living room, style setting so he could sit and
chat with patients in a relaxed atmosphere, and then provide dental care
based on each individual's needs and wants.
Kennedy also
learned that Painter loved the outdoors. That was the origin of the enormous,
angular windows that he designed to jut out of the front of the building
and the side facing the road.
Other large
windows have been inserted in the barn's exterior walls, and some of the
interior walls are glass blocks. That allows natural light to penetrate
through the building
"I really like
being outside. This makes me feel like I'm outside," Painter said. "On
a sunny day we don’t even have to turn on the lights inside."
Painter also
has a taste for the unusual, and he likes the juxtaposition of old and
new. So all the walls inside are angled or curved. Not one corner is 90
degrees.
Even the ceiling
is angled, rising from a low of 7 1/2 feet to a high of 12 feet.
"1 knew it
would drive the cost up, but 1 wanted something different because my practice
is different," Painter said
To serve as
a centerpiece of the interior, Painter and his father, Lester Painter,
relocated a silo from an old barn in Decatur.
"We took it
down board by board and brought it here," he said.
They had to
cut off the top six feet of the 24 foot structure to fit it inside, but
they retained the natural reddish finish of the old cypress wood. It now
serves as a conference room and is visible, thanks in part to the glass
walls, from nearly every part of the building.
Other walls,
of shiny galvanized aluminum, contrast with the natural new wood of the
floors and the vintage wood of the old barn's beams, which have been left
exposed wherever possible. The interior lighting and the furniture are
modern, but the exposed pipes of the new heating and air conditioning system
recall days and buildings gone by
The barn's
80 loot long cellar, visible in part through an area cut out of the floor
between the angular glass windows is of natural stone. Right now the cellar
is being used only by Painter's daughter, a softball pitcher who practices
there.
The back end
of the building, closed of from the office area, remains unfinished inside
as does the loft. Eventually, Painter, who lives just across the state
line in Ohio, would like to see the loft renovated and turned into a residence.
The biggest
piece of old farm equipment, an International Harvester corn picker weighing
several tons, was removed from the premises with the aid of Lester Painter's
tractor. Some of the other equipment, including a horse drawn cultivator
that had sat outside so long a mature tree had grownup through it, remains
outside as a reminder of the structure's original use.
The project's
design phase took two years, the construction another year and Painter's
office opened for business this fall.
He doesn't
like to disclose the project's total cost, other than "it was more than
I thought it would be." Even then, he saved money by doing the painting,
landscaping and some of the other work himself and by selecting his contractors
carefully.
“The end result
was worth the time and trials,” Painter said.
"People who
see it are amazed. They're driving by and they stop in to look. They just
love to see an old building not torn down, but put to a new use.
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