Bellingham Parks and Recreation will tear down a historic horse barn off Old Woburn Street, next to Bayview Cemetery, but will keep the barn’s weather vane and cupola, which serve as reminders of the cemetery’s equine past.
Parks posted photos on Facebook in December of a crew removing the classic horse-themed weather vane from the barn. The department plans to take down the cupola in the second week of January.
Both cupola and weather vane will be restored and incorporated into a maintenance facility, to be built at the site this year.
The barn had been used in recent decades as a shop, but parks has since moved into the Pacific Street Operations Center. Assessor records date the structure back to 1930.
In an email, parks staff related an anecdote from a now-retired employee, who said horses kept in that barn were used to mow the cemetery.
The department used horses well into the 1930s: The Park and Cemetery Commission wrote city council in 1936 with an emergency request for $150, to buy a team of horses.
“One of the present team … has given birth to a colt,” the letter reads, “and it will be impossible for this animal to be worked for a period of at least four months.”
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