Death of the Dream: Farmhouses in the Heartland

The industrialization of America economy between 1862 and 1893 provided pioneer farm families with the means to realize their dream on the Minnesota prairie. At the same time that complex machinery and railroad transportation became affordable, the United States government made available millions of acres of free land, which attracted thousands of European immigrants to the American Midwest.

The way of life of these first industrialized farmers gave the nation much of its economic might and many of its characteristic values. It also fostered a distinctive wave of Victorian-era architecture. The concept of the so-called L-house evolved out of hard experience on the land rather than from philosophical musing on the drawing board. The classic farmhouse was a structural species evolved through adaptation to a specific set of economic circumstances.

Now the last of these original farmhouses are disappearing. Many of them have been left standing open, neither locked nor boarded up. Once a house is abandoned, it becomes subject to damp and decay, which removed the paint, wallpaper, and plaster. Air and light and heat enter through broken windows and rotted roof to dry and bleach the boards. Cleaned to the bones, the house becomes stark and silent, belying the color and variety of the life that went on within it.

How these classic farmhouses looked outside and inside, how they fit into their farmsteads, and how they sometimes evolved from small simple shapes into large compound structures as the families prospered is detailed in "Death of a Dream." Some of William Gabler’s stunning photographs are composed of a dozen or more negatives taken from varying positions to better illustrate the many aspects of his subjects.