Dairy Barn, 196 East Spain Street, Sonoma

The owners of this barn in downtown Sonoma hired APD Preservation to assess the historic character of the structure in anticipation of restoring it and possibly relocating it on the site.

The barn is in the middle of a property that has been used as a horse farm for over a century. The first structure on the site was a one-story, wood-frame barn built in 1904 by William Russell; Russell added a second story to the barn ca. 1910. In 1922 Henry Castagnasso, a local teamster and farmer, added two shed-roof additions as part of a building campaign undertaken to adapt the farm to the needs of his Clydesdales. Castagnasso’s son extended the barn westward and added a third shed-roof addition between 1941 - 1953. Numerous changes have been made to the window and door openings as dictated by changing uses of the interior spaces, but the overall feeling and design of the utilitarian building remains intact. Alice determined that the barn qualifies as a locally significant historic resource because of its association with the agricultural development of the town of Sonoma and as an intact example of an auxiliary farming structure.