Watervliet - the first of the villages

Watervliet Center, North Albany, Albany and Schenectady Counties, 

New York, published by Stone & Stewart, 1866

Recently, I had a day to spend in Albany and decided to finally see the first of the Shaker communities - Watervliet. The area was known as Niskayuna by the natives and Watervliet by the Dutch settlers. Today, what remains of the Shaker village is within the Town of Colonie, adjacent to the Albany International Airport.


At its peak in 1839, Watervliet had 350 members and 2,500 acres of land. Sadly, in the 1920s, a fire destroyed all of the North Family buildings.  The South and West Family buildings were sold off to private hands;some are still standing. A handful of the Church Family buildings remain. I happened upon the village during an annual craft show in the meeting house and picked up some lovely Christmas gifts.

Thanks to a reworking of the east-west road that runs through the community, drivers cannot easily cut-through the village and this effectively slows the pace, enabling one to envision life here in the late 18th century and 19th century, before flight and automobiles. Inviting trails surround the old mill pond just south of the church family cluster.

Beautifully-drawn plans of the Shaker community at Watervliet, as it was in the 1930s, as the county was taking over the property, are here

Watervliet community showing locations of Church, North, West, and South Family plus Cemetery (north to the left)

Detail of South Family shows Shaker precision, order and practicality 

This 1813 poem about Watervliet was written at the Hancock, Massachusetts community and republished in Landmarks of American women's history by Page Putnam Miller :

Mother

Near Albany they settled

And waited for a while

Until a mighty shaking

Made all the desert smile

At length a gentle whisper

The tidings did convey

And many flocked to Mother

To learn the living Way

It's just a short walk from the Church family buildings to the cemetery where I visited Ann Lee's grave. Her brother William rests beside her on one side in the quiet, orderly burial ground. On her other side is the grave of Mother Lucy Wright, who ran the New York communities after Ann's death. As with the Runyon family, Lucy and her husband Elizur Goodrich joined the Shakers with many of their extended family members.

What impressed me most about Watervliet was how little remains. Of 778 original acres, most is now taken up by the airport, surrounding business complexes, the country club, the county jail. It makes me realize how lucky we are to have Pleasant Hill in its present condition.

Everything Old is New Again

A fourth-generation Mormon named David Hall is making plans to develop his idea of a Utopian society in the woods of Vermont - "New Vistas" is the name, or was until recently. He chose the areas surrounding the towns of Royalton, Sharon, Tunbridge, and Stafford because of their proximity to the birthplace of Mormon prophet Joseph Smith.

I listened to WBUR Boston's interview with David Hall and found myself comparing Hall's vision with that of the Shakers'.

In the early years of the nineteenth century our ancestors were creating a community at Pleasant Hill based on faith. For a time, it was heaven on Earth. They believed it would be sustainable.  But, long-term, it was not. Everyone points to the celibacy issue as being their downfall. If it weren't for that, would they have continued to thrive? What percentage of the population is willing to live communally, and give up their material wealth? How does that degree of willingness change along with a changing political climate?

Joseph Smith's 1833 Plat of Zion was Hall's inspiration for the project (and Smith's inspiration for the plat was the Bible prophet Enoch who built the Holy City of Zion). The plat shows a city of 20,000 laid out in a grid pattern.

Plat of the City of Zion, June 1833

Hall was quoted as saying “Each [multi-family] house has house captains, which are a team of one man and one woman. These are a selected married couple, with each providing leadership for and dealing directly with issues related to their gender.” In this respect, his plan is very much like the Shaker's system of "family" houses led by a male and female elder. But would individuals be valued for their unique gifts and assigned jobs that develop those talents? Or would the business entity decide who performs the various functions of the community?

There won't be cars and trucks driving around; everything one needs would be within walking distance. To help maintain wilderness and animal habitat, and stop urban sprawl, each community will be surrounded by thousands of acres of unplanned nature. Hmmm...they want to be isolated, or at least have a buffer between themselves and the world. Livestock will also be kept outside the towns. It sounds like these future Vermonters won't be vegan. Each community will be one square mile, high-density living, and each person will be allotted just 200 square feet of living space.

I wonder what rules David Hall's society will impose on its members. I can guess that the plat's grid system isn't going to work well in the hilly terrain of rural Vermont. Hall has said that so far, he's bought up only wooded property. His artist's renderings of New Vistas show an area that would need to be clear-cut before development. So that buffer would come at a cost to the wilderness.

20,000 people of child-bearing age quickly become a larger group. Unless... we're talking about members of society who are past reproductive age, or are sterile... or celibate. The largest of the Shaker communities never exceeded 700 individuals and even within the communities people spread out in smaller "families."

What do you think about Hall's Vermont utopia? Good idea?