Jay Branson, a self-taught architect, started building a round barn in rural Oklahoma to process his grief.
Its beauty draws strangers off the highway in Oklahoma, and a gentle kind of obsession mixed with down-home prairie demeanor saw the barn turn into something more like a cathedral.
The story begins decades ago when Branson went to visit a friend in Washington D.C., where he stood under the dome of the US Capitol and wanted dearly forever after to build a round structure with a dome.
Growing up a chiseled farmhand turned handyman, Branson is entirely self-taught in architecture and home-building, and built houses in the tiny decaying town of Marshall, Oklahoma. When his first wife Julie passed away, he needed a project to keep his mind going.
Settling on a round barn to park his motor home, his neighbor suggested he turn it into a wedding venue, which struck him as a good idea.
After completing the large main area using interlocking concrete-filled foam and rebar blocks that fit together like LEGOS, he began to imagine what a dome might look like, and produced a sketch of the interlocking octagons and diamonds that would form the arched ribs of the dome to be built with poplar wood.
It draws the gaze up to an oculus where natural light floods the space and regularly causes visitors to shed a tear.
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For 7 years Jay Branson has been all alone out there on the plains, although he occasionally got help from his new wife and always has the company of his dog. But for the most part, this quiet, self-deprecating man has built one of the most impressive structures in the county, all by himself.
“I just started cutting,” Jay told his great-niece, Hailey Branson-Potts, reporting for the LA Times. “You know, if you figure the circumference of any structure that’s round, and divide it into segments, there’s a way. You’ve just got to make it even, get it exactly right, and just start building.”
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Round barns have a fascinating history. They were considered by early ranchers as more economic because feeding the animals becomes a continuous motion around the edge. They were also believed to be spiritually superior since the “devil couldn’t hide in the corners,” and the round shape doesn’t provide a flat wall to be knocked over by a tornado.
Branson is currently fighting a battle against recurrent prostate cancer, and is attempting to design demonstration-sized pieces for several unfinished areas like the bridal suite, so in case something should happen to him there is some evidence for someone else to understand how to move forward.
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