Sapporo Agricultural School's Farm No.2

This guide to Sapporo Agricultural School's Farm No. 2 opens three weeks after William Smith Clark arrived from Massachusetts in 1876 to run the new college, when he wrote directly to the powerful commission chief Kuroda Kiyotaka asking for an experimental farm. It follows how quickly Kuroda agreed, how Clark's colleague William Wheeler designed the Model Barn from their own campus blueprints, and how the resulting red-roofed, balloon-frame structure went up within a year. You'll hear how the farm's closed loop of horses, cattle, pigs and crops kept running long after Clark sailed home only eight months later. Stand close to the barn's timber frame to see the American design choices up close.