Envisioning Utopia: Transcendentalist and Fourierist Landscapes at Brook Farm, West Roxbury, Massachusetts

Abstract

Brook Farm, Massachusetts, is perhaps the most famous of the 19th-century utopian communities in America. When it was founded in 1841, its guiding vision was provided by the distinctive New England philosophy known as Transcendentalism. Yet, only three years later, in 1844, it publicly embraced Fourierism and became known as the Brook Farm Phalanx. Archaeological work is providing new information on how these ideologies were inscribed in the landscape, showing that the architectural features built during the Transcendentalist period helped create certain habits of thought and action that actively resisted the complete transition from Transcendentalism to Fourierism.