Free standing, doubly supported micromechanical beams which are fabricated from films with built‐in compressive strain fields buckle at critical geometries. Experimental determination of the onset of buckling for known geometries leads to a direct measurement of the strain level in the films. This idea is supported by appropriate theory for experimental structures which form clamped, doubly supported beams with constant cross section and varying lengths. Application to low pressure chemical vapor deposition polysilicon leads to the conclusion that strain fields of 0.2% reduce to 0.05% during annealing.