In Search of Utopia

In Search of Utopia

Connie Weinzapfel was strolling down a sidewalk in New Harmony, Ind., (pop. 916) several years ago when she spied some young men circling a building, peeking in windows. Not the least bit alarmed, she struck up a conversation and learned they were students who had traveled all the way from Italy to visit the Wabash River town, established in the early 1800s by two different groups seeking to create utopian societies.

The Harmonists, a Pennsylvania religious group believing perfection would come through celibacy and communal living, arrived first, in 1814, naming their settlement Harmonie. Innovative and hard working, they soon transformed the frontier wilderness into a prosperous village.

Ten years later the congregation, restless and plagued by problems with neighbors, malaria, and isolation, moved back to Pennsylvania and sold the town to Scottish industrialist Robert Owen, who envisioned a perfect world created through education and the elimination of social classes. He invited prestigious scientists, scholars, and artists to share the dream in his town, which he re-named New Harmony.

That colony of great minds dissolved after only two years, but the experiment led to educational innovations in America such as kindergarten, free public school systems, and trade schools.

Today, New Harmony is home to a mix of professionals, academics, self-employed people, and retirees, some of whom are descendents of the Owen utopian community, says Weinzapfel, director of Historic New Harmony, a group that oversees many of the town’s 24 historic buildings and sites. And, she says, in a very real sense it is still a place where visionaries reside.

Over the years, civic leaders and benefactors, including Jane Blaffer Owen (wife of Robert Owen’s great-great grandson), commissioned world-renown architecture, initiated beautification projects, and backed preservation, cultural, and tourism efforts. Most importantly, they saw to it that the town found new uses for its legacy.

“It would have been easy to turn the town into a dusty museum, but instead we are a living history community,” Weinzapfel says.

A massive, five-story granary, for example, was painstakingly refurbished in the late 1990s and is now used as a conference center and auditorium. On the outskirts of town, a labyrinth, a circular maze of waist-high bushes that Harmonists walked through while meditating nearly 200 years ago, continues to be used for the same purpose today.

“We are a quaint little town that allows you to get away and unwind,” says John Rodriguez, manager of The New Harmony Inn, which houses thousands of guests each year, many participants in arts conferences or spiritual retreats.

The same tranquility that draws visitors makes New Harmony a wonderful place to live, says lifelong resident Jan Kahle. “There are things to do, but it’s not the kinds of things that distract from spending time with others.” The town boasts art galleries, theater and symphony performances, but not one fast-food restaurant or chain store. Most residents—well, maybe not teens—seem perfectly content living 25 miles away from the nearest shopping mall.

It’s the kind of place where doors to churches are not locked, and a walk after dark is not intimidating. Only one intersection in town is busy enough to warrant a stoplight. “It’s not unusual to see couples, hand in hand, walking down the middle of a street,” Rodriguez says.

“Everyone here takes tremendous pride,” says Weinzapfel, mentioning a recent project to prove her point. When Historic New Harmony published a book to celebrate the millennium, local students, not professionals, snapped the black and white photographs of community landmarks.

With a smile, she adds, “I like to think it is the spirit of all those great minds of the people who lived here before that continues to have a wonderful influence on what we do today.”

Veda Eddy is a freelance writer in The Villages, Fla.

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