The Round Barn

The story of Washington’s Round Barn begins in the summer of 1914 when Fred Zimmerman bought two parcels of land off of Eldridge Street from Fred Brackman and John Widmer. It was Zimmerman’s intention to locate a large dairy business there. Soon after the purchase, Zimmerman visited the University of Illinois and their newly constructed round barns to get ideas for his dairy business, as he wanted to construct the most modern facility possible.

The three round barns at the U of I were initially experimental constructions in the early 1900s, but they became the blueprint for hundreds of round barn constructions throughout the Midwest.

Zimmerman returned and constructed his round barn on Eldridge Street at a cost of $8,000, which today would be over $210,000. The state-of-the-art facility, 56 feet in diameter, and 60 feet tall at the apex, contained cement silo in the center, 12 feet in diameter, that could hold 150 tons of material.

The milk from the farm was bottled and most was taken to Peoria, where it was sold by the Washington Dairy Company, which had several stores in Peoria.

Zimmerman sold the dairy business to the J.D. Roszell Company in 1929, and Roszell’s sold the farm to Elmo Muller in 1944, who ran Muller’s Dairy until 1951.

Muller then sold the property to Edward & Alma Steffen. They operated a chicken farm there until Edward’s death in 1965, and Alma singlehandedly continued the operation until 1972. The close of that farm ended the productive life of the Round Barn. Alma passed away in 2016 at the age of 94.

In 1980, David Chasco spiked interest in the aging round barn, as it was one of the few left standing in Illinois. Chasco, a University of Illinois architecture instructor at the time, developed a presentation with the help of his senior design students on the restoration of the barn for its use as a possible community center. The result of the presentation in Washington led to the formation of the Washington Historical Society, whose first big project was the push for the restoration of the barn.

The first step was the get the barn listed on the National Register of Historic Places. An application was filed, but with the possibility of the barn being moved as part of its restoration, it was denied, leaving Washington own its own to finance the project.

The problem was, the newly-formed Historical Society didn’t have any money, and the city organizations who verbally supported the project didn’t commit to contributing any money toward the project either. Alma Steffen offered to donate the barn to the Historical Society if they moved it to a new location, but the $500,000-600,000 cost of that was far too expensive of an endeavor for the Historical Society to take on without any assistance. In the end the Historical Society abandoned the project.

By 1984, nearby citizens were complaining about the barn’s condition and the rats that were coming from it. The barn had become a place for teens to congregate and in its deteriorating condition, was dangerous and not safe. Calls again went to the Washington Historical Society to help with renovation, but their stance was clear. Historical Society President Frances Whittaker was quoted as saying: “It was just impossible and still is for our society to take over anything of that magnitude. It would have to be a community project…I have found this community hard to pull together. Those that have roots are in wheelchairs and have canes. The young vital people have no roots here, not enough of them.”

The surrounding buildings came down in 1984 but the Round Barn remained in the hopes that some renovation could take place, hopes that never were realized.

In 1988 the Steffens began to dismantle the barn, burning it piece by piece on a nearby burn pile. On a windy March afternoon, the burn pile embers blew toward the barn and it caught fire and was destroyed, leaving only its memory.