The barn, still located on the property near several commercial buildings, is said to be where Glidden perfected his improved version of barbed wire which would eventually transform him into a successful entrepreneur.

The barn, a building of high historical significance, was not included as part of the National Register listing for the property until 2002, nearly 30 years after the original nomination was approved.

His holdings stretched along Lincoln Highway, both the north and south sides, from the Kishwaukee River in the east to present-day Annie Glidden Road on the west.

The farm's south border, near where Glidden would grant the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad right-of-way through DeKalb in the early 1890s was near present-day Taylor Street.

[3] The two-story Joseph F. Glidden House is constructed from locally fired brick, which is relatively soft.

[4] The brick is said to have been fired at a small brickyard which once existed on the Kishwaukee River in DeKalb, near the present-day Lincoln Highway bridge.

[4] The home stands on a stone foundation and was designed by local carpenter and eventual barbed wire competitor to Glidden, Jacob Haish.

As his personal residence, the house, and its accompanying barn, were closely associated with his invention, really just an improvement, of barbed wire.

Glidden's improvement upon a wire board fence developed by Henry Rose was of vast importance in the settlement of the United States west of the Mississippi.

Glidden fit two hair pins to the shaft of a coffee mill, one centered and the other off-center.

[7] The home was mostly designed in a French Colonial style, though it contains some elements of Greek Revival architecture.

[4] The two-story brick structure is supported by a fieldstone foundation and still features its original front porch.

The stairs leading to the front porch are supported by two similar wooden posts, which, like the house, are set into fieldstone bases.

The roof itself is a low gable and dominated by single stack, straddle ridge chimneys at its east and west ends.

[8] The basement, and for part of the home's history, the main living area, is accessed via a staircase at the back of the first-floor hall.

One of the rooms off the main basement is the kitchen where Glidden is said to have experimented with the coffee grinder and his wife's hair pins, eventually leading to his brand of barbed wire.

The upstairs hall contains a door which once accessed a staircase to the widow's walk, what remains of the space has been used as a closet for over a century.

[11] The Glidden Barn, located to the rear and east of the home, was thought to have been added to the National Register of Historic Places when the original nomination for the house was approved in 1973.

Those moves were approved by the Illinois Historic Sites Advisory Council in 2002 and the barn officially became part of the National Register.

[2] Tradition in the Glidden family holds that the barn, like the house itself, was designed and built by prominent local carpenter Jacob Haish.

The drive is aimed at raising US$2 million to expand the Joseph F. Glidden House site to include museum space and a media center.

It is of the three-bay, English tradition, the west bay containing a space for a stairwell leading to a hayloft and seven stalls.

What is left, ten rows of stone above the ground, is completely invisible when the home is viewed by passers-by on Lincoln Highway.