MEMaine field entry
Big Chicken Barn Books & Antiques
Ellsworth, ME
A 21,600-square-foot former Ellsworth chicken barn where a sprawling antique floor sits beneath a second level holding more than 150,000 books and paper collectibles — alongside a vintage-magazine operation the business says exceeds 50,000 issues.
Big Chicken Barn turns a relic of Maine's poultry era into a two-story collecting universe: antiques and household objects below, mountains of books, magazines, newspapers and paper ephemera above.
Field notes
Why it belongs
Antique market, used and rare bookstore, vintage-magazine dealer, paper-ephemera store, record seller, furniture and home-goods dealer, collectible market and repurposed agricultural landmark.
The inventory is unusual enough, but putting it inside 21,600 square feet of former chicken barn makes the experience difficult to mistake for an ordinary antique shop.
Big Chicken Barn Books & Antiques occupies 21,600 square feet of a former poultry barn along Route 1 outside Ellsworth. Downstairs, the changing antique inventory ranges through furniture, cookware, radios, records, instruments, tools, toys, jewelry, clothing, signs, typewriters and countless other collectible objects. Upstairs is an enormous book-and-paper operation that the business describes as holding more than 150,000 books and paper collectibles, alongside a vintage-magazine collection of more than 50,000 issues. Those figures are kept separate rather than added into a single total, but the physical effect is obvious: this is part antique market, part used bookstore, part paper archive and entirely too large for a quick browse.
Store contents
What you will find
Directory categories
Known for
- 21,600-square-foot former chicken barn
- Antiques
- Furniture
- Collectibles
- Records
- Tools
- Toys
- Instruments
- Typewriters
- More than 150,000 books and paper collectibles
- Rare and old books
- Vintage newspapers and ephemera
- More than 50,000 magazines
- Year-round operation