Yoder Barn Theatre (Newport News, Virginia)

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fergusoncenter.cnu.edu/yoderbarn/

The Yoder Barn Theatre, a well-known landmark on the Peninsula of Virginia, has been given to Christopher Newport University by the Yoder family and the Yoder Preservation Trust, Inc. It will be a site for CNU theater and musical productions, student organization activities, and LifeLong Learning Society programs and gatherings. It also will be made available for use by the community.

The programming that the Yoders provided the community over the years will be continued and expanded using the expertise of the professional staff from the Ferguson Center for the Arts.

The Yoder barn was built in 1935 by the Yoder family following a fire that destroyed their original barn built in 1899. The Yoders ran a dairy farm until 1969 when they closed their processing plant operation to raise beef cattle and farm crops. Upon the sale of the main farm land in 1995, the family donated property they owned a quarter of a mile away to a community theater project on which the current Yoder barn was moved to serve as the theater’s structure.