It started as a 50th birthday gift to a music-loving dad: Turn a 140-year-old tobacco barn on a family’s 60-acre farm near Greensboro into a stage. Eight years later, it’s a gift to music lovers across the Piedmont.
Altered State: Photographer Watson Brown Preserves a Landscape
A retired city planner finds his calling photographing the barns and historic homes of Edgecombe County. His images preserve a fading landscape while helping us see it anew.
History in a Handbag
In neglected barns and abandoned pickup trucks in eastern North Carolina, a seamstress finds old, forgotten stories — in the form of vintage fabrics — that she makes new again.
Mountain Ripples
On a farm in a cove in the Smokies, a biologist turned cheesemaker is bringing a slice of woods back to life. Like a pebble tossed into a pond, every careful decision she makes, every creature she cares for, has a lasting effect on the forest she’s trying to save.
The Fairest of Them All
In Pinehurst, an unusual barn once served as an exhibition hall for livestock and a stump for local politicians, who’d snap their suspenders and make big promises. Today, this restored barn in the heart of horse country hosts weddings, dinners, and even rock concerts.
Humble Hideaway
Since 1983, hikers and wanderers traveling the pass between Roan and Hump mountains have taken refuge in a simple red barn known as the Overmountain Shelter. Little do they know, they’re following in the footsteps of revolutionaries.
Upcycled & Down-Home
For three days each month, the owners of Chartreuse Barn in Thomasville give the cavernous old space new purpose as a vintage goods shop — and deeper meaning as a peaceful retreat.
The Barns of Madison County
Tobacco barns once dotted the Appalachian landscape in the thousands, before a government buyout in 2004 brought an end to that way of life. Now, passionate locals are recording their stories and giving these iconic structures a second chance.
Through the Looking Glass
A 79-year-old barn in Transylvania County transformed one man and his family, just when they needed it most.
