It will be recalled that the angels, with help from taxpayers and donors, saved the former St. Paul’s Catholic Church from the wrecking ball. Many wanted it removed as part of Beloit’s riverfront reclamation. But the old edifice has become a popular tourist attraction as the Angel Museum.

Likewise, there were those who felt the old Beckman Mill west of town had too long suffered from neglect and wasn’t worth saving. Wrong. Uncounted hours of volunteers’ toil and much donated material made the old grist mill well again. It’s a study and worthy icon of 19th century agrarian industry on (Ra)coon Creek. Score another one for the guardian angels.

THOSE OLD STRUCTURES (and others) enjoy a useful afterlife. Who is to say the old Dougan round barn can’t be born-again as a museum focused on the glory years of America’s dairyland?

To look at it now, the barn on Colley Road is in sad shape. But in years past, it was a showplace of Guernsey milking-in-the-round; the centerpiece of a thriving farm dairy business. The barn was built by a retired Methodist minister named W.J. “Daddy” Dougan. Deafness took him out of the pulpit and gave him a new calling, which was to become an innovative farmer known locally as the “Babies’ Milkman.”

Time, weather and neglect have left the barn, which is visible to Wisconsin bound travelers on I-90/39, in dire danger of collapse, or so it would seem. Its huge, umbrella-shaped room tops off a rotting rotunda that clings precariously to a concrete-silo centerpiece. Missing roof and siding boards let daylight and the elements to enter.

CABLES HAVE BEEN stretched around the barn to keep its walls from twisting and falling from wind or a rooftop load of heavy snow. But Band-Aid measures might not keep the barn standing through another winter.

Enter guardian angels. First, there’s a small band of barn-believers who have formed the Dougan Dairyland Development Associates, Inc., poetically known as DoDaDAI. Next, there are numerous organizations devoted to historical preservation, especially sites and structures related to agriculture. And, finally, there are the super-angels in the form of foundations that have given, or say they will give, the serious money needed to (1) assess the building’s condition, (2) buy time by stabilizing the structure with temporary repairs, and (3) help volunteers and other donors restore the round barn as “America’s Dairyland Heritage Site.”

After what seemed, to outsiders, a lengthy period of inaction, the preservation group has let it be known that (1) its members have been busy and successful in enlisting help, (2) donations already in the bank are more than enough to pay for a structural study, and (3) repairs including a temporary roof will be made before winter comes, meaning soon.

BELOIT LAWYER Bill Cunningham, who is chairman of the DoDaDAI group, and Mary Frey, one of the founders, have announced the receipt of a check for $30,000 from the Beloit Foundation. That will pay for a “stabilization study” by Madison structural engineer Kurt Strauss. His considerable credits include work on the years-long multi-million-dollar renovation of Wisconsin’s fine Capitol building. Strauss will charge $15,300 for his study, which is to produce recommendations for structural repairing to start by Oct. 10.

Meanwhile, according to Cunningham and Frey, the Janesville-based Jeffris Family Foundation has all but assured the barn-savers of substantial funding for up to half of the stabilization cost. Further, the foundation, which has helped with the restoration of numerous buildings of historical significance, probably will decide in October to finance a more complete study of the entire Dougan Dairy farmstead. That will be done next spring.

As if to underscore the urgency of the round barn’s need for repairs, Cunningham relates that the Jeffris group put big money into another barn-saving effort, but a windstorm flattened the structure before it could be reinforced.

THE JEFFRIS FOUNDATION, says Cunningham, likely will approve additional funds if the DoDaDAI organization succeeds in raising at least two-thirds of the cost of final restoration of the site. That project could run into the seven figures, according to early estimates.

The round barn’s guardian angels got a big boost early-on. Frey and Bill Wieland negotiated with the late Earl Boutelle, agent for Springbrook Development Partnership, to buy the Dougan Dairy farmstead for $150,000. They paid $60,000 up front and took a $90,000 mortgage. The deal specified that if DoDaDAI gained tax-exempt status, which it did, then the $90,000 mortgage would be forgiven, which it was.

Various other contributions, such as $5,000 from the Wisconsin Humanities Council and a $10,000 allocation of community development block grant funds from the city, have put the preservation group in a position to go ahead with stabilization studies and work. Those gifts, says Cunningham, are a “demonstration of confidence” in the project.

THE BARN-SAVERS plan to erect a sign along I-90/39 calling attention to the project. When Cranston Road is extended across the Interstate, it will connect with a new road to give travelers easy access to the round barn site, from the Gateway development area.

All of which suggests that the angels in charge of derelict buildings just could succeed again.

“When the Gateway becomes a reality,” predicts Cunningham, “we’ll be called visionaries.”

William D. Behling is Editor Emeritus of the Beloit Daily News.