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| Brook Farm | |
| U.S. National Register of Historic Places | |
| U.S. National Historic Landmark | |
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| Location | 670 Baker Street, Boston, Massachusetts |
|---|---|
| Coordinates |  42°17′28.90″N 71°10′26.71″WCoordinates: 42°17′28.90″N 71°10′26.71″W |
| Area | 188 acres (0.76 km2)[2] |
| Built | 1841 |
| Architect | Brook Farm Community |
| NRHP reference No. | 66000141[1] |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | October 15, 1966 |
| Designated NHL | July 23, 1965[3] |
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| Socialism in the United States |
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Brook Farm, also called the Brook Farm Institute of Agriculture and Education[4] or the Brook Farm Association for Industry and Education,[5] was a utopian experiment in communal living in the United States in the 1840s. It was founded by former Unitarian minister George Ripley and his wife Sophia Ripley at the Ellis Farm in West Roxbury, Massachusetts (9 miles outside of downtown Boston) in 1841 and was inspired in part by the ideals of transcendentalism, a religious and cultural philosophy based in New England. Founded as a joint stock company, it promised its participants a portion of the profits from the farm in exchange for performing an equal share of the work. Brook Farmers believed that by sharing the workload, ample time would be available for leisure activities and intellectual pursuits.
Life on Brook Farm was based on balancing labor and leisure while working together for the benefit of the greater community. Each member could choose to do whatever work they found most appealing and all were paid equally, including women. Revenue for the community came from farming and from selling handmade products like clothing as well as through fees paid by the many visitors to Brook Farm. The main source of income was the school, which was overseen by Mrs. Ripley. A pre-school, primary school, and a college preparatory school attracted children internationally and each child was charged for his or her education. Adult education was also offered.
The community was never financially stable and had difficulty profiting from its agricultural pursuits. By 1844, the Brook Farmers adopted a societal model based on the socialist concepts of Charles Fourier and began publishing The Harbinger as an unofficial journal promoting Fourierism. Following his vision, the community members began building an ambitious structure called the Phalanstery. When the uninsured building was destroyed in a fire, the community was financially devastated and never recovered. It was fully closed by 1847. Despite the experimental commune’s failure, many Brook Farmers looked back on their experience positively. Critics of the commune included Charles Lane, founder of another utopian community called Fruitlands. Nathaniel Hawthorne was a founding member of Brook Farm, though he was not a strong adherent of the community’s ideals. He later fictionalized his experience in his novel The Blithedale Romance (1852).
After the community’s failure, the property was operated for most of the next 130 years by a Lutheran organization as first an orphanage, and then a treatment center and school. The buildings of the Transcendentalists were destroyed by fire over the years. In 1988 the State of Massachusetts acquired 148 acres (60 ha) of the farm, which is now operated by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation as a historic site. Brook Farm was one of the first sites in Massachusetts to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places and be designated a National Historic Site. In 1977, the Boston Landmarks Commission designated Brook Farm a Landmark, the city’s highest recognition for historic sites.[6]
History
Planning and background
George Ripley founded Brook Farm based on Transcendental ideals.
In October 1840, George Ripley announced to the Transcendental Club that he was planning to form a Utopian community.[7] Brook Farm, as it would be called, was based on the ideals of Transcendentalism; its founders believed that by pooling labor they could sustain the community and still have time for literary and scientific pursuits.[8] The experiment was meant to serve as an example for the rest of the world, based on the principles of “industry without drudgery, and true equality without its vulgarity”.[9] At Brook Farm, as in other communities, physical labor was perceived as a condition of mental well-being and health. Brook Farm was one of at least 80 communal experiments active in the United States throughout the 1840s, though it was the first to be secular.[10] Ripley believed his experiment would be a model for the rest of society. He predicted: “If wisely executed, it will be a light over this country and this age. If not the sunrise, it will be the morning star.”[4] As more interested people began to take part in planning, Ripley relocated meetings from his home to the West Street bookshop operated by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody.[11]
Beginnings
Ripley and his wife Sophia formed a joint stock company in 1841 along with 10 other initial investors.[8] He sold shares of the company $500 apiece with a promise of five percent of the profits to each investor.[7] Shareholders were also allowed a single vote in decision-making and several held director positions.[4] The Ripleys chose to begin their experiment at a dairy farm owned by Charles and Maria Mayo Ellis in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, near the home of Theodore Parker.[12] They began raising money, including holding a meeting at Peabody’s bookshop to raise $10,000 for the farm’s initial purchase.[13] The site was eventually purchased on October 11, 1841, for $10,500.[14] though participants had begun moving in as early as April.[15] The 170-acre (0.69 km2) farm about eight miles (13 km) from Boston was described in a pamphlet as a “place of great natural beauty, combining a convenient nearness to the city with a degree of retirement and freedom from unfavorable influences unusual even in the country”.[12] The purchase also covered a neighboring Keith farm, approximately 22 acres (89,000 m2), “consisting altogether of a farm with dwelling house, barn, and outbuildings thereon situated”.[14]
The first major public notice of the community was published in August 1841. “The Community at West Roxbury, Mass.” was likely written by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody.[16] Though they began with 10 investors, eventually some 32 people would become Brook Farmers.[8][17] Writer and editor Margaret Fuller was invited to Brook Farm[18] and, though she never officially joined the community, she was a frequent visitor, often spending New Year’s Eve there.[19] Ripley received many applications to join the community, especially from people who had little money or those in poor health, but full-fledged membership was granted only to individuals who could afford the $500 share of the joint stock company.[20]
One of the initial founders of Brook Farm was author Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne did not particularly agree with the ideals of the experiment, hoping only that it would help him raise enough money to begin his life with his wife-to-be Sophia Peabody.[9] She considered moving there as well and even visited in May 1841, though Hawthorne sent her away.[21] Ripley was aware of Hawthorne’s motivations, and tried to convince him to get involved more fully by appointing him as one of four trustees, specifically overseeing “Direction of Finance”.[14] After requesting his initial investment be returned, Hawthorne officially resigned from Brook Farm on October 17, 1842.[22] He wrote of his displeasure with the community: “even my Custom House experience was not such a thraldom and weariness; my mind and heart were freer …Thank God, my soul is not utterly buried under a dung-heap.”[23]
Fourier inspiration
Brook Farm was reorganized to follow the work of Charles Fourier.
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In the late 1830s Ripley became increasingly engaged in “Associationism“, an early socialist movement based on the work of Charles Fourier. Horace Greeley, a New York newspaper editor, and others began to pressure the Brook Farm experiment to follow more closely the pattern of Charles Fourier[24] at a time when the community was struggling to be self-sufficient.[20] Albert Brisbane, whose book The Social Destiny of Man (1840) had been an inspiration to Ripley,[25] paid Greeley $500 for permission to publish a front-page column in the New York Tribune which ran in several parts from March 1842 to September 1843. Brisbane argued in the series, titled “Association: or, Principles of a True Organization of Society”, how Fourier’s theories could be applied in the United States.[20] Brisbane published similar articles in 1842 in The Dial, the journal of the Transcendentalists.[26] Fourier’s societal vision included elaborate plans for specific structures and highly organized roles of its members.[24] He called this system for an ideal community a “Phalanx”.[27]
To meet this vision, now under the name “Brook Farm Association for Industry and Education”,[5] Brook Farmers committed themselves to constructing an ambitious communal building known as the Phalanstery. Construction began in the summer of 1844 and the structure would provide accommodations for 14 families and single people as well.[28] It was planned to be 175 feet (53 m) by 40 feet (12 m) and include, as Ripley described, “a large and commodious kitchen, a dining-hall capable of seating from three to four hundred persons, two public saloons, and a spacious hall or lecture room”.[29]
Ripley and two associates created a new constitution for Brook Farm in 1844, beginning the experiment’s attempts to follow closely Fourier’s Phalanx system.[30] Many Brook Farmers supported the transition; at a dinner in honor of Fourier’s birthday, one member of the group proposed a toast to “Fourier, the second coming of Christ”.[31] Others, however, did not share in the enthusiasm and some left the commune altogether.[31] One of those who left was Isaac Hecker, who converted to Catholicism and went on to become the founder of the first American-based order of priests, the Paulist Fathers, in 1858.[32] In particular, many Brook Farmers thought the new model was too rigid and structured and too different from the carefree aspects that they had been attracted to.[33] Both supporters and detractors referred to the early part of Brook Farm’s history as the “Transcendental days”.[31] Ripley himself became a celebrity proponent of Fourierism and organized conventions throughout New England to discuss the community.[34]November 7, 1846, issue of The Harbinger, printed at Brook Farm
In the last few months of 1844, Brook Farmers were offered the possibility of taking over two Associationism-inspired publications, Brisbane’s The Phalanx and John Allen’s The Social Reformer. Four printers were part of Brook Farm at the time and members of the community believed it would elevate their status as leaders of the movement as well as provide additional income.[35] Ultimately, the Brook Farmers published a new journal combining the two, The Harbinger.[28] The journal’s first issue was published June 14, 1845, and was continuously printed, originally weekly, until October 1847, when it was relocated to New York City, still under the oversight of George Ripley and fellow Brook Farmer Charles Anderson Dana.[36] Naming the publication, however, turned out to be a difficult task. Parke Godwin offered advice when it was suggested to keep the name The Phalanx:
Call it the Pilot, the Harbinger, the Halycon, the Harmonist, The Worker, the Architect, The Zodiac, The Pleiad, the Iris, the Examiner, The Aurora, the Crown, the Imperial, the Independent, the Synthesist, the Light, the Truth, the Hope, the Teacher, the Reconciler, the Wedge, the Pirate, the Seer, the Indicator, the Tailor, the Babe in the Manger, the Universe, the Apocalypse, the Red Dragon, the Plant, Beelzebub—the Devil or anything rather than the meaningless name Phalanx.[37]
Decline and dissolution
Brook Farm began to decline rapidly after its restructuring. In October 1844, Orestes Brownson visited the site and sensed that “the atmosphere of the place is horrible”.[38] To save money, “retrenchments”, or sacrifices, were called for, particularly at the dinner table.[39] Meat, coffee, tea, and butter were no longer offered, though it was agreed that a separate table with meat be allowed in December 1844.[38] That Thanksgiving, a neighbor had donated a turkey.[28] Many Brook Farmers applied for exceptions to these rules and soon it was agreed that “members of the Association who sit at the meat table shall be charged extra for their board”.[40] Life on Brook Farm was further worsened by an outbreak of smallpox in November 1845; though no one died, 26 Brook Farmers were infected.[28] Ripley attempted to quell the financial difficulties by negotiating with creditors and stockholders, who agreed to cancel $7,000 of debts.[41]
Construction on the Phalanstery was progressing well[28] until the evening of March 3, 1846, when it was discovered that the Phalanstery had caught fire. Within two hours, the structure had completely burned down;[42] firefighters from Boston arrived too late.[43] The fire was likely caused by a defective chimney. One participant noted, “Ere long the flames were chasing one another in a mad riot over the structure; running across long corridors and up and down the supporting columns of wood, until the huge edifice was a mass of firework”.[44] The financial blow from the loss of the uninsured building was $7,000 and it marked the beginning of the end of Brook Farm.[43]
George Ripley, who had begun the experiment, made an unofficial break with Brook Farm in May 1846.[45] Many others began to leave as well, though the dissolution of the farm was slow. As one Brook Farmer said, the slow decline of the community was like apple petals drifting slowly to the ground, making it seem “dreamy and unreal”.[43] On November 5, 1846, Ripley’s book collection, which had served as Brook Farm’s library, was auctioned to help cover the association’s debts.[46] By the end, Brook Farm had a total debt of $17,445.[47] Ripley told a friend, “I can now understand how a man would feel if he could attend his own funeral”.[46] He took a job with the New York Tribune and it took him 13 years to pay off the Brook Farm debt, which he did in 1862.[48]