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 Kent Dairy Round Barn - Red Lodge, Montana Posted by:  T0SHEA
N 45° 13.160 W 109° 14.504
12T E 638048 N 5008819
About 1½ miles north of Red Lodge on Highway 212, this is, indeed, a round building, though now it is not really a barn, but a church hall.
Waymark Code: WM188Q5
Location: Montana, United States
Date Posted: 06/20/2023
Views: 0
One of the last round barns to be built in the nation and one of the few to be built in Montana, the Kent Dairy Round Barn appears to be the last one standing in the state. There is a wooden round barn in Arcadia, OK which claims to be the only truly round barn in the country. If that claim is true (disregarding this barn), that would make this one of only two in the country.
Erected in 1939-41, the barn was built of red brick salvaged from a building in Bearcreek which was bought by the Kents and dismantled, solely for the value of the bricks.
60 feet in diameter and two stories in height, the building encloses 2826 square feet on each floor. The lower floor was used as a milking floor while the upper storey was used as a hay loft. When it wasn't full of hay the loft was often used for barn dances. Perfectly round, the building had a double thickness of brick on the lower floor, 13 inches thick, with a single thickness of brick in the loft with wood planks lining the interior. In all, there were 25 rectangular windows on the first floor and 12 square windows on the second story.
When the Kents retired, the barn was repurposed, first as a restaurant, then a car dealership and today a church hall.
KENT DAIRY ROUND BARN
Finnish immigrant Ephraim Kent settled in Red Lodge in the early 1900s to work in the coal mines while his wife, Fiina, began a small dairy business. It was a family venture from the start, with all the children pitching in to deliver raw milk in buckets, and later bottles, to local customers. The business grew, and by 1938 the Kent sons and their wives were all involved in the dairy. When a city ordinance prohibited cows in town, the family moved, purchasing this land and an abandoned building in Bear Creek. They meticulously salvaged its bricks, wood joists, and decorative tin ceiling, which they used to build their barn. Eighty-one-year-old Emery McNamee, an expert on round barns, served as building consultant, but the work was accomplished by Ephraim and his sons. Although none of the Kents had ever laid brick, they quickly learned, displaying uncanny ingenuity in adapting materials at hand along the way. Steam pipes recovered from a nearby mine served as stall dividers, hand-hewn beams were finished with a plane whose cutting bit was a piece of leaf-spring from a car, and thirty-seven log support posts were shaped with a draw knife. Built with the determination, perseverance, and fortitude the Finnish call “sisu,” the round barn served the industrious, hard-working Kents for thirty years. Many locals remember summer dances held in the spacious second floor before it was filled with winter feed. When Armas and Sylvia Kent retired in 1969, the barn was converted for use as a restaurant. Its historic function remains evident, however, and the cherished Red Lodge landmark is today an excellent example of adaptive reuse.
From the NRHP plaque at the building
Construction: Brick
Is this a 'working' barn?: Other (describe below)
Other:
church hall
Distinctive Features: Distinctive Shape (round, octagon, gambrel roof, cupola, multi-level)
Rating - Please Rate this Barn: 
Other Distinctive Features: Not listed
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