Hog Barn Up and Moves

With completion of the new Swine Center (featured in the Winter/Spring 2001 issue of Highlights), the old Hog Barn—which held pigs all these years right in the middle of campus, despite occasional complaints from less agricultural members of campus—up and moved a block or so west to a new site and a new job.

It was a momentous day to see the big two-story Craftsman style barn, jacked up on wheels, move cautiously down the lane from just south of Crocker Nuclear Laboratory to its new site a block or so west. With some careful engineering, the big barn successfully made sharp turns and missed most of the trees along the way. Some branches were trimmed just ahead of the moving barn. Aquaculture Specialist Fred Conte snapped photos as the main barn and the rest of the building, disassembled into six pieces, were moved. About three dozen faculty and staff witnessed the entire historic move. Dr. Conte’s photo album can be accessed at http://animalscience.ucdavis.edu/events/news.Select the “Hog Barn Move” button. Also available on that site is a professionally-made video about the old barn’s history..

Animal Science teaching and research activities related to swine, which had been carried out in the 90-year-old building since its construction, were relocated four years ago to a modern swine facility near the campus airport. That move ended the old barn’s claim to being the oldest building on campus still used for its original purpose. Staff Development & Professional Services expect to move into the old barn in its new life when it is finally refurbished during the 2005-06 academic year. Instead of a wide open barn, the reincarnation will house two classrooms for staff training, a resource library and office space. Plans are to keep the Craftsman styling of the exterior relatively unchanged, reusing the old windows and keeping the shingles so it blends with its new neighbors to the north, the John Muir Institute (formerly a horse barn and then offices of Architects & Engineers) and the Silo (until 1959 the campus dairy), which long ago gave up storing grain to become part of the student union. The spirits of Hubert Heitman, Elmer Hughes and others will surely watch over the old Hog Barn.