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Three Bay Threshing Barn
The northernmost third of Ohio is the location of barns derived from New England/New York settlers, who brought earlier English building traditions into the state. The earliest of these ethnic barns was the Three Bay Threshing Barn, also sometimes called the New England Barn, the Connecticut Barn, the Yankee Barn, or the English Barn. It has a floor plan ratio of about 3:2, although additional bays may be added to the gables in later versions. Side bays function as a storage place, grain bins, stabling areas and sometimes as hay mows. The central section was the threshing area originally. Wagon doors gave access on the front side, and a second set on the back side provided the winnowing draft, as well as an easy exit for the wagon. Hay was normally stored under the gable roof in the loft.

Many Three Bay Threshing barns boast of decorated doors consisting basically of a painted "rounded arch entirely within the space of the door." "The design is usually duplicated on both sections of the main door to form the arch, and is replicated on smaller doors (Noble 1993, 26). Northwestern Ohio, with extensions into both Indiana and Michigan, accounts for the greatest number of barns with decorated arch doors.

Siding consisted of some planks or boards nailed to sills and plates or girts. They were spaced a bit apart to allow ventilation. By placing the boards vertically rain water would run off quickly and not collect on the top edge as it would on horizontally affixed siding, which would then increase rot.

Another feature found on many types of barns, but especially common on Three Bay Threshing barns, is the pent roof, a largely unsupported triangular roof structure projecting from a wall of the barn. The small English three-bay barn has a higher incidence than others of gable wall pent roofs, which may be related to the pent roof’s function of extending the rather limited interior, and thus, protected area of the barn. "As farm operations grew in the later 19th Century, adding a pent roof may have been an economically alternative to building a larger barn" (Noble 1993, 29).
 

The careful observer will note the similarities in form and function between the Three Bay Threshing barn and the upper parts of the German Bank barn. In both, hay was stored in the loft and grain was threshed by hand, using wooden flails. After separation of the grain from the straw and its removal, the grain and husks (chaff) were tossed together into the air. The heavier grain settled back down into the winnowing basket or a pile on the floor, and the lighter chaff was blown a bit away where it was saved for animal food. The draft provided by the second set of doors in both types of barn was necessary for easy separation of grain and chaff.