{"nrhp_refnum":"11000614","name":"Wheeler Family Farmstead","other_names":["Capt. Truman Wheeler House"],"category":"district","location":{"address":"817 S. Main St.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Great Barrington","county":"Berkshire County","state":"MA","lat":42.17796693300005,"lon":-73.36207044999998,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"2011-09-06","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Architecture","Exploration/Settlement","Agriculture","Military"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A 1.5-acre farmstead district at 817 South Main Street in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, with a wood-frame house begun ca. 1733 and seven farm outbuildings and structures, occupied by five generations of the Wheeler family.","why_significant":"The house combines Dutch and English framing methods, a regional trait from the New York-Massachusetts border area, and shows a long sequence of construction stages from the 18th to the early 20th century. The surviving outbuildings illustrate changing farm practice over time. The property also documents the Wheeler family, whose progenitor Truman Wheeler was one of the town's first merchants.","narrative":"Wheeler Family Farmstead occupies 1.5 acres on the southern edge of Great Barrington, Massachusetts, along U.S. Route 7. Once part of a 130-acre farm, it now holds a wood-frame house and seven farm buildings and structures, including a workshop, hay barn, cow house, heifer house, silo, animal shed and carriage house. The house grew in stages from a small Dutch-style post-and-beam room, possibly built around 1733, to a two-room center-chimney plan added between 1764 and 1771, and was later raised to two stories and extended with a rear ell. Its mix of Dutch and English framing reflects cultural exchange along the disputed New York-Massachusetts border. Truman Wheeler, a merchant who arrived from Connecticut in 1764, bought the property in 1771, and five generations of his family farmed here. The farmland was sold for commercial development, and the historic buildings passed to the Great Barrington Historical Society in 2007, which operates them as a museum.","period_of_significance":null,"architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":"Colonial: Dutch Colonial and Postmedieval English","criteria":[],"status_note":"Now a museum, owned by the Great Barrington Historical Society since 2007; the wagon house attached to the house is under restoration and the house exterior has been restored to its early 20th-century appearance.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:10:51.837196-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/80/7941/63794180/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_MA/11000614.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/11000614/c16af323b8-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/11000614/c16af323b8-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"Crepoudutnysusa","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wheeler_Family_Farmstead.JPG\" rel=\"noopener\">Crepoudutnysusa</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 3.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wheeler_Family_Farmstead.JPG"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/63794180","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler_Family_Farmstead","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16903183"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/massachusetts/berkshire-county/wheeler-family-farmstead-11000614/"}