A Short History of Storage Buildings
Since the dawn of time, or at least the dawn of what we call civilization, men have sought ways to store things. The earliest of these, at least the ones we have records of, were made of clay, shaped into many rope like circles to form a rudimentary jar for grain storage. Many such jars were placed together in centralized locations forming what we think to be a grain storage co-op, probably under the auspices of the governing authorities of the day.
There were probably other types of storage structures, but they did not survive, only the best built, or the most protected items of this type have made it through for our study.
As time went by, these were modified, enlarged, redesigned, and became the basis for such improvements as grain storage silos, stables, and even barns for storing livestock feed.
In many parts of the world, brick and stone structures were created for storage, but this was primarily a privilege of the wealthy upper classes.
In Europe and America, a variety of storage buildings came into existence. Such buildings as smoke houses, powder houses, barns, and other outbuildings came to be important for storing, and preparing foods and other products. Many of these were built with specific purposes in mind, such as “root cellars”, which were dug bellow the freeze line to protect root crops at a steady temperature, and smoke houses which were manufactured very strongly to avoid losing the families stores for winter.
Today, most of us don’t do much home butchering, most of us don’t need a place to store our sweet potatoes or parsnips, but we still need a place to put our other stuff. The great thing is, that you don’t have to be wealthy or privileged to own a storage building. In fact, they are quite affordable, and there is one to fit almost any budget.
Many of these modern storage marvels are also built to stand the test of time, maybe not for thousands of years, but well beyond our lifetimes!