A barn advertisement is an outdoor advertisement painted onto the exterior of a roadside

barn A barn is an agricultural building usually on farms and used for various purposes. In North America, a barn refers to structures that house livestock, including cattle and horses, as well as equipment and fodder, and often grain.Alle ...

. Advertisers take advantage of the barns' prominence in rural landscapes, paying their owners for the right to paint and maintain logos and slogans on them. Painters of barn advertisements and other

mural A mural is any piece of graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage. Word mural in art The word ''mural'' is a Spani ...

s are known as "wall dogs". Once a common form of billboard advertising in the Midwestern and

Southeastern United States The Southeastern United States, also referred to as the American Southeast or simply the Southeast, is a geographical region of the United States. It is located broadly on the eastern portion of the southern United States and the southern por ...

during the early– to mid–20th century, barn advertisements have faded into obscurity, as many of these rural

ghost sign A ghost sign is an old hand-painted advertising sign that has been preserved on a building for an extended period of time. The sign may be kept for its nostalgic appeal, or simply indifference by the owner. History and preservation Ghost signs a ...

s fall into disrepair, along with the structures that bear them.

Advertisers

Common barn advertisers include local

roadside attraction A roadside attraction is a feature along the side of a road meant to attract tourists. In general, these are places one might stop on the way to somewhere, rather than actually being a destination. They are frequently advertised with billboards. ...

s, restaurants, and

chewing tobacco Chewing tobacco is a type of smokeless tobacco product that is placed between the cheek and lower gum to draw out its flavor. Some users chew it, others do not. It consists of coarsely chopped aged tobacco that is flavored and often sweetened; ...

manufacturers. The

Bloch Brothers Tobacco Company The Bloch Brothers Tobacco Company (formerly the Helme Tobacco Company) of Wheeling, West Virginia, Wheeling, West Virginia was a tobacco company founded by brothers Aaron and Samuel Bloch in 1879. It was best known for its Mail Pouch chewing ...

is credited with popularizing the medium. The company began advertising their products on the sides of buildings in 1890. By 1925, they had moved to advertising on Mail Pouch Barns. At the program's height in the early 1960s, some 20,000 barns in 22 states displayed Mail Pouch advertising, with the greatest number in

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

. Most of the barns were painted by

Harley Warrick Harley E. Warrick (October 5, 1924 – November 24, 2000), was an American barn painter, best known for his work painting Mail Pouch tobacco advertising on barns across 13 states in the American Midwest and Appalachian states. Over his 55-year ...

. Competitors such as

Red Man America's Best Chew (formerly Red Man) is an American brand of chewing tobacco which was first introduced in 1904. In the early 1940s, Clark Byers painted barns and their roofs for Rock City near

Chattanooga, Tennessee Chattanooga ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Hamilton County, Tennessee, United States. Located along the Tennessee River bordering Georgia, it also extends into Marion County on its western end. With a population of 181,099 in 2020 ...

, often with messages promising travelers the chance to see seven states from atop

Lookout Mountain Lookout Mountain is a mountain ridge located at the northwest corner of the U.S. state of Georgia, the northeast corner of Alabama, and along the southeastern Tennessee state line in Chattanooga. Lookout Mountain was the scene of the 18th-cen ...

. Byers painted advertisements for the attraction on over 900 barn roofs in 19 states. More recently,

Bob Evans Restaurants Bob Evans Restaurants, also known as Bob Evans, is an American chain of restaurants owned by Golden Gate Capital based in New Albany, Ohio. After its founding in 1948 by Bob Evans (1918–2007), the restaurant chain evolved into a company with ...

painted barns in

Indiana Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th s ...

and

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rockf ...

in a style identical to their billboards, until 2001. The restaurant chain later painted some barns with the

Italian tricolor The national flag of Italy ( it, Bandiera d'Italia, ), often referred to in Italian as ''il Tricolore'' ( en, the Tricolour, ) is a tricolour featuring three equally sized vertical pales of green, white and red, national colours of Italy, with ...

to advertise its pasta dishes.

Frisch's Big Boy Frisch's Big Boy is a regional Big Boy restaurant chain with headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio. For many years a Big Boy franchisee, in 2001, Frisch's became the exclusive owner of the Big Boy trademark in Indiana, Kentucky, and most of Ohio and ...

also advertised on barns at one point. From 1997 to 2002, the Ohio Bicentennial Committee commissioned

Scott Hagan Scott may refer to: Places Canada * Scott, Quebec, municipality in the Nouvelle-Beauce regional municipality in Quebec * Scott, Saskatchewan, a town in the Rural Municipality of Tramping Lake No. 380 * Rural Municipality of Scott No. 98, Sask ...

to paint 101 barns, including one in each

county A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposes Chambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...

, with the committee's logo and colors. One was destroyed by a tornado shortly after its painting and was replaced. A few have since been torn down or repainted. The painted barns celebrated the state's 200th anniversary in 2003. Each barn took about 18 hours of labor and of paint. Enthusiasts traveled from across the state to watch Hagan paint the barns. An estimated one million people saw at least one of the barns. Since 2009, Hagan has also been commissioned to paint barns with anti-tobacco and

breast cancer awareness Breast cancer awareness is an effort to raise awareness and reduce the stigma of breast cancer through education on symptoms and treatment. Supporters hope that greater knowledge will lead to earlier detection of breast cancer, which is assoc ...

messages in

West Virginia West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States.The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States while the B ...

Regulation

In 1965, Congress passed the

Highway Beautification Act In the United States, highway beautification is the subject of the Highway Beautification Act (HBA), passed in the Senate on September 16, 1965 and in the U.S. House of Representatives on October 8, 1965, and signed by the President Lyndon B. Jo ...

, which regulated and in some cases removed billboards from the sides of federally funded highways. Barn advertisements were also affected by this legislation, leading owners to paint over them, until public outcry led to a 1974 amendment that specifically exempted them as "folk heritage barns". The National Historic Barn Preservation Act of 2001 protects barns 50 years or older from demolition and funds education programs about these structures.

Method

The advertisements are sketched then painted freehand, with the painter standing on a scaffolding platform.

References

External links

*
Barn Painting
, interview with Hagan about Warrick on ''

All Things Considered ''All Things Considered'' (''ATC'') is the flagship news program on the American network National Public Radio (NPR). It was the first news program on NPR, premiering on May 3, 1971. It is broadcast live on NPR affiliated stations in the United ...

'' Barns in the United States History of the Midwestern United States Billboards Tobacco advertising Advertising by medium

Advertisers

Regulation

Method

See also

References

Further reading

External links