North of the town of Paragon in Morgan County, Indiana, Warren discovered a two-story, two-room log house built in 1820. Each room had its own fireplace and exterior limestone-rubble chimney. A two-room rear wing, or ell, built of both frame and log construction had been added a few years later. The house was dismantled in 1966 and moved to the future site of the outdoor museum. In the Whitaker-Waggoner log house, named for its original owner-builder and a later owner-occupant, Warren found convincing evidence that builders originally covered substantial log houses with siding to preserve them from rot and decay. The functional study of traditional buildings was foremost in Warren’s theoretical approach to folklife research (see, e.g., his 1976 article, “The Whitaker-Waggoner Log House from Morgan County, Indiana”).

"One area of folklife research where there is a great opportunity for functional studies is folk architecture. Indeed, one of the outstanding features of folk architecture which helps to set it apart from fine architecture or academic architecture is its functional quality. Not only does the function of a building dictate its size, its shape, its location, and the number, size, and nature of the openings in it, but the ways in which it is built and the materials used in it are determined by a number of functional considerations such as availability of materials, durability of materials, ease with which materials can be worked, and so on."

Warren Roberts, “Function in Folk Architecture,” Viewpoints, 230