The Wedding Cake Barn

Just outside Greensburg in Decatur County stands one of Indiana's most striking rural landmarks: the Strauther Pleak Round Barn, built in nineteen fourteen. Farmers built round barns across the Midwest around the turn of the twentieth century believing that circular designs eliminated dead corners, allowed a single worker to feed cattle from a central position, and could withstand wind better than rectangular structures. This one has three stacked tiers, a conical roof, a central octagonal silo, and a cupola, giving it the look of a giant wedding cake rising from a cornfield.

Builders constructed the silo first, then raised the circular barn around it, using the silo as a structural anchor for the roof. The design proved so effective that the barn still stands in excellent condition today. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in nineteen ninety-three, one of the relatively few true round barns remaining in Indiana.