Dotted along the landscapes that make up the valleys of Hudson, Mohawk, and Schoharie are the last vestiges of our common Dutch heritage - the Dutch Barn. Once numbering in the thousands, there are now a few hundred left at most found sprinkled about the countryside.

Built between 1630 and 1825, most suffer from ignorance and neglect. Many of them have fallen from disrepair, sold as scrap, cleared for suburban development, or even worse, dismantled to become someone's new "rustic" home as far south as South Carolina.

It seems that folks outside the Albany area, and in particular Europe, where their counterparts are protected by law, understand the importance of these architectural treasures and the role they play in local history.

All barns are not created equal. The New York "Nether" Dutch barn has unique characteristics that make it different from the standard "English" type barn that most people are familiar with.

The roots of the New World Dutch Barn come from Holland and Germany and were built as grain barns by early Dutch settlers.

On the exterior, the Dutch barn has a broad gable roof that extends low to the ground (as low as 9 feet). On the gable end are center doors for wagons and a smaller door to the stock aisles on one or both of the side ends. A pentice (pent roof) over the center doors served protection from the elements. The siding was typically horizontal and detailing simple to non existent. Few openings other than doors and traditional holes for birds graced the external walls.

It's the interior construction that gives the Dutch barn its unique look. Mortised, tenoned and pegged beams are arranged in "H"shaped bays, with columned aisles alongside a central space that was used for threshing the grain. The ends of anchor (cross) beams projecting through the columns are often rounded to form "tongues," a distinctive feature found only in the Dutch barn. Once you see one, you never forget what they look like.

In fact, the barn was so important that it often was erected before the settlers built their own home. It was a successful crop (and hopefully surplus) that would lead to a good life on the land, and without a great barn to house the harvest living on the land would be difficult. So, early settlers would build simple houses, or other rudimentary structures to get by until the barn and first harvest were set.

Most of the Dutch Barns in existence today were built during or after the revolution replacing most of the first crop of barns that were destroyed by fire or war.

Old world barn predecessors in Europe included living quarters for humans, along with their animals and storage for crops. There is evidence of this here too.

In 1977, Historian John Wolcott surveyed the Town of Guilderland and found 77 Dutch Barns. By 1990, there were about 20 left. Montgomery county had 67 Dutch Barns in the mid 80's. There may be 50 or less today. How many survive in Rennselaer county?

Recently, Dutch Barns have been in the news. The last Dutch Barn in Colonie, on Vly Road, was dismantled to become the framework (with another Dutch Barn) for a rustic homestead in Lake George. There are those who buy barns so they can dismantle them and rebuild them somewhere else. To preservationists, the original location of the barn is almost as important as the barn itself.

In 1996, Governor Pataki signed the Farmer's Protection and Farm Preservation Act - partly designed to preserve historic barns that were built before 1936 (mostly dairy barns). An income tax credit equal to 25% of the cost of rehabilitating those barns is possible if it's income-producing; built or placed in agricultural service before 1936; rehabilitation cannot "materially alter the historic appearance" of the barn; and only the costs incurred after January 1, 1997 can be applied. While this is a step in the right direction, many old Dutch barns are not "income producing," which omits them from the tax incentive.

Historians John Wolcott and Russ Ziemba would like to see a law passed specifically to protect Dutch Barns and provide incentives needed to insure that they're not moved. They have proposed such a law to Assemblyman Jack McEneny, also a historian in his own right. Wolcott goes one step more and proposes that the Dutch Barn become a State symbol, along with the State Flower, Fossil, Tree, etc. (Article 6 of the NYS Consolidated Laws Arms And Great Seal Of State).

We already have a State Muffin (apple muffin). Would it be asking too much to recognize the Dutch Barn, the most endangered species of our Dutch heritage?