The Barn at Exit 63 The big pink barn, with its Victorian-looking cupola and standing just yards from Exit 63, still rests as a testament to Gray Village's past. (Photo Don Perkins)

The Maine Turnpike came to Gray in 1955. That was also the year Almond Doggett bought the property at 8 Center Street, a farmstead with its big old barn that dates back to the 1820s. Doggett had a business plan.

"That's why my father bought this place," said Mary Bosse who is 81 and now lives at the property. "He built the gas station out back here," she added.

The big pink barn, with its Victorian-looking cupola and standing just yards from Exit 63, still rests as a testament to Gray Village's past. It measures 38' by 64' and houses equipment of A.L. Doggett Inc., a company started by Mary's father and now run by her son. The business specializes in underground gas tanks.

Like many old New England farmsteads, this barn is connected to the main house via an ell, which is now the A.L. Doggett office. New England still has a plethora of this type of construction - a house connected to a barn via numerous other buildings. Because of its climate it made sense to keep everything undercover. Why trudge through snow on your way to the barn? As a result, it's uncommon to see this type of rural architecture down south.

Mary Bosse remembers when the ell was divided in sections. The part adjoining the main house was a kitchen that led to a wood shed, which led to the barn.

About 20 years ago the barn went through a major structural renovation. A modern foundation was poured under one side and two huge I-beams supported by metal columns now hold up the building's center. But on each gable end there's still some of the massive original granite foundation. And hidden by a lilac bush on one end is an iron bar mortised into a granite block that Bosse said served as a tie-out for the farm animals of long ago.

Doggett never farmed here, nor did Bosse. Even those who have lived in Gray Village for many, many years cannot recall the farm's use in the early days. But before Doggett purchased the property in 1955, the Lashua family retrofitted the barn for a large-scale chicken operation by adding windows and a second floor.

The barn is pink today because of asphalt siding installed before Doggett purchased the property. But under this you can see weathered, yellow clapboards over vertical boarding. Some of these vertical boards are 16 inches wide. They're applied over the hand-hewn, six-bent post and beam frame. A bent is a truss comprised of a vertical post with its adjoining crossbeam that meets another post on the opposite side of the barn. The rafters are smaller stock, about 2-3 feet apart, and are covered with horizontal boarding. And as is common of early barns, there is no ridgepole.

Sitting atop the roof is a wonderful, white cupola and weather vane. In fact, the barn's cupola was featured in a 1981 Boston Globe article titled "Proud cupolas once ventilated the hay." Numerous cupolas from throughout New England were pictured in the article, including this one in little, old Gray, Maine. Back then, the weather vane had a prancing black stallion over four compass directions, but the horse is gone today. All that remain are the compass points.

In the following year, in July of 1982, the horse was stolen. "Somebody crawled up there during a rainstorm and heisted it," said Bosse. "I had all kinds of people stop before who wanted to buy it," she remembers. It seems the thief used ropes and a large maple tree that once grew near the structure to gain access.

"We went to the police and they said �by the time you woke up in the morning that weather vane was probably three states away,'" said Bosse. It seems collectors will pay for old Americana. The barn still sits proud today. A traditional testament to what the town looked like before the Turnpike claimed the western fields of Gray Village.