Captain Isaac Sayre Barn

The Captain Isaac Sayre Barn, so named for the successful whaling captain who, around 1825, purchased the Main Street home lot on the corner of Hampton Road, where this barn stood as part of an active farm. The sellers were heirs of Colonel Benjamin Hunting (1753-1807), a shipowner who made an immense fortune in the early days of the whaling boom. After Captain Sayre’s purchase, the barn remained in the Sayre family for nearly a century. The whaling boom (roughly 1820-1850) brought unprecedented wealth and opportunity to the largely farming community of Southampton — requiring many barns — most of them gone today. The rare survival of this type of English barn is a significant reminder of the typical Southampton farm barn of the 18th and 19th centuries. Census documents indicate that the Sayre family used the barn for thrashing grain, storing hay and farm tools and housing cattle and horses. For some time before C. Edwin Dimon and his wife purchased the barn in 1931, its exterior was seen as an ideal place to plaster commercials ads and colorful posters touting the arrival of the circus, and for a long while it was known as the “Billboard Barn”. In 1954, the Sayre Barn was rolled down Main Street on logs to the Southampton History Museum, to the astonishment of the townspeople. There it was joined on the grounds by other 19th century buildings brought to the site to represent an “Old Time Village.” By 2010, it was showing its age and a successful fundraising campaign resulted in its complete restoration. The Captain Isaac Sayre Barn’s association with both Southampton’s agricultural heritage and its prominent whaling families, represents two important influences on our history.