The Architecture of Control: Shaker Dwelling Houses and the Reform
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University of Washington Tacoma UW Tacoma Digital Commons SIAS Faculty Publications School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences 9-2003 The Architecture of Control: Shaker Dwelling Houses and the Reform Movement in Early- Nineteenth-Century America Julie Nicoletta University of Washington Tacoma, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.tacoma.uw.edu/ias_pub Part of the Architecture Commons, History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons, and the Social History Commons Recommended Citation Nicoletta, Julie, "The Architecture of Control: Shaker Dwelling Houses and the Reform Movement in Early-Nineteenth-Century America" (2003). SIAS Faculty Publications. 22. https://digitalcommons.tacoma.uw.edu/ias_pub/22 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at UW Tacoma Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in SIAS Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of UW Tacoma Digital Commons. The Architecture of Control Shaker Dwelling Houses and the Reform Movement in Early-Nineteenth-Century America JULIE NICOLETTA University of Washington, Tacoma D espite more than a decade of new research on as their economy changed from primarily agriculturalto Shaker history and architecture, the dominant commercial. public image of this religious sect, which flour- These ties to the outside world are most evident in the ished in early-nineteenth-centuryAmerica, remains one of Shakers'own architecturaldevelopments in the firsthalf of simplicity,perfection, social isolation, and religiosity.The the 1800s. Their desire to create villages as orderly com- Shakersthemselves nurtured this view, and over the course munities with buildings that would control behavior and of the 1800s and 1900s, numerous articles, stories, and shape men, women, and children into proper members of scholarlystudies by outsidershave createdvarious histories the Shakercommunity paralleled the rise of institutionsof that obscure the reality of what the Shakerswere and how reform and confinement in the United States of the same they lived. The Shakers,or the United Society of Believers period.As did their counterpartsin mainstreamculture, the in Christ'sSecond Appearing,have become part of a myth Shakersfelt that humans could and should be transformed of nineteenth-centuryrural America that assertssimplicity into respectable members of society. They believed they as the key value and isolationas the majordesire in attempt- could accomplishthis goal by exertingcontrol over humans ing to create a perfect society (Figure 1). through well-designed architecture using the concept of It is evident, however,that the group was neither sim- surveillance to enforce behavior. The Shakers, as did ple nor isolated. The Shakershad a symbiotic relationship worldly reformers, enthusiastically practiced their own with the world that they could not deny despite their reli- reforms and met with success in the first half of the nine- gious precepts that held that mainstreamsociety was cor- teenth century, only to see failure in the loss of members rupt. They depended on converts to continue the growth beginning in the late 1840s. of the sect. Their economic prosperity was possible only In this article,I analyzethe architectureof control and by trading with outside communities. In the late eigh- surveillance by focusing on Shaker dwelling houses and teenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Shakers'trade putting them into the largercontext of reform in the era of centered on local markets and farmers. Later on, the the earlyrepublic.' Specifically, I comparethe development demand for Shakergoods also came from the mainstream of Shaker dwelling houses with the Quaker-led reform of American consumer, who, in an age of increasing indus- prisons and insane asylums during the period of religious trializationand mass production, began to desire products revivalsknown as the Second Great Awakeningto demon- reminiscent of a simpler American past. The Shakers in stratehow andwhy the Shakersincorporated ideas from the turn increased their consumption of manufacturedgoods outside world and applied them to their own buildings. I This content downloaded on Wed, 9 Jan 2013 13:18:41 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions . ^. i^ 40- -4,o A ?d- - ..8a?e >t e "Ia 4*A I r i J l pgg Pub This content downloaded on Wed, 9 Jan 2013 13:18:41 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Figure 1 Shaker village, Alfred, Maine, ca. 1880. Lithographfrom W. W. Clayton, History of York County, Maine (Philadelphia,1880), unpag. also discuss the Shakers' treatment of their mentally ill terns.7A significantcontribution of all these studies is that members.The dwellinghouses, as the focus of Shakerdaily they look at Shakermaterial culture as evolving ratherthan life and worship, tell us much about how the Shakersused fixed in a specific time period, as earlierShaker experts and their buildingsand the space createdby them to try to con- collectorshad. The recent researchis instrumentalin exam- struct a utopia in which all memberslived in unison and in ining Shakerarchitecture in the context of reform. which individualssubordinated themselves to the good of The reformimpulse of the Jacksonianage has captured the whole.2 the attention of numerous authors.As the social historian Recent scholarshiphas shown that the Shakersnot only DavidJ. Rothmanhas noted, "a rich and imaginativeliter- attemptedto strikea balancebetween their world and main- aturetraces the history of Americanand Europeanprisons, streamsociety, but that they also clearlyborrowed from pre- mental hospitals, reformatories, orphanages, and vailingdesigns and adaptedthem to suit their needs. Robert almshouses, with books and articles numbering well into P. Emlen's ShakerVillage Views demonstrates that though the hundreds."8Scholars have examinedhow the desire for Shakervillages were distinctive, they evolved from main- order in an age of rapidindustrialization and change man- stream American towns.3Although June Sprigg and Paul ifested itself in the creation of institutions of confinement Rocheleau'sShaker Built: The Formand Functionof Shaker that used discipline and surveillanceto shape deviantsinto Architecturepresents a more traditionalview of the Shakers proper members of society. Rothmanwrites that the "very as simple builders,it offers detailed descriptionsand beau- openness [of JacksonianAmerica] was producing disorder tiful photographsof many Shakerstructures.4 My book, The and disarray."9He states that one aspect of disorderwas a Architectureof the Shakers,notes that late-eighteenth-cen- perceived rise in crime, and Americansdevised new types tury Shakerarchitecture in the Northeast drew on Anglo- of institutionsto combat it. Other researchershave looked Dutch examplesin easternNew York,where the earliestand at the role of republican citizenship as a means to create most influentialShaker villages were founded. By the early civic virtue shared by all the nation's inhabitants,thereby 1800s, Shakerswere modeling meeting houses, dwelling ensuring social order. Dell Upton has argued that this houses, and workshopson the Federalstyle.5 The furniture notion was exercised in the development of Lancasterian historianJohn T. Kirk,in TheShaker World: Art, Life,Belief, schools,which were intendedto transformchildren into vir- makes a convincing case that Shaker decorative arts were tuous Americans using architecture, discipline, and "verymuch like vernacularwork made aroundShaker com- economies of scale in education.10Nevertheless, little analy- munities"that had adopted a stripped-downversion of the sis has been conducted on how utopian communities con- Neoclassical style and that the Shakersreduced "this aes- tributed to this movement. The location of prisons and thetic to a unified simplicity."6 Scott T. Swank elaborates asylumsbeyond the boundariesof the city, seen as a source on these ideas in ShakerLife, Art, andArchitecture: Hands to of corruption,and the creation of isolated, inward-looking Work,Hearts to God,in which he focuses on the Canterbury, environments at these institutions suggest that a utopian New Hampshire,community to examinedesign in the con- impulselay behind some of the reformefforts of the period. text of the Shakers'daily lives, beliefs, and behavior pat- A study of Shaker dwelling houses demonstrates that the THE ARCHITECTURE OF CONTROL 353 This content downloaded on Wed, 9 Jan 2013 13:18:41 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions communalsect believedit could serve as a model for chang- only two months after her brother'sdeath. The loss of the ing society as well. It is not surprising,then, that domestic founder and leader of the sect brought on a crisis among and foreign travelers alike considered Shaker villages the Believers. Many Shakers left the group, disillusioned important destinations on a par with the new prisons and that Mother Ann would not be presentfor the coming mil- asylums being constructed in America. Illustriousvisitors lennium.The strengthof her successorskept the movement including Gustavede Beaumont,Alexis de Tocqueville,and going, however,even though Shakerismchanged drastically. CharlesDickens added Shakercommunities to their list of Both Whittaker andJoseph Meacham,a converted Baptist Americanplaces to see. minister from New Lebanon, New York, began imple- The rise of evangelicalism during the Second Great menting structuresthat organizedworship and community. Awakening provides