On an Eastern Tennessee farm once owned by author Alex Haley, Maya Lin has transformed an abandoned wooden barn into a library for the Children‘s Defense Fund, which focuses on African-American history and literature. The original building is an example of a local vernacular structure called the Tennessee Cantilevered Barn, common in this part of Tennessee from the early nineteenth century until the 1930s, in which a standard shed is perched above two rough-hewn log cribs. The shaded area under the overhang once provided shelter for farm animals, and the elevated barn floor allowed hay and grain crops to dry. For the conversion to a library, Maya Lin left the rustic exterior largely intact and inserted a series of pristine rooms inside. The open cribs have frosted glass walls and a slate floor. Gaps between the logs allow light into the two new rooms, one of which contains a gift shop, and the other a stairway and lift to the library above. The reading room is illuminated by a skylight and one window, which frames a view of the landscape. The library is named after Langston Hughes (1902-67), one of the most important writers and thinkers of the Harlem Renaissance, the African-American artistic movement in the 1920s that celebrated black life and culture.