Photo of the Day: Shoe Shop, Old Economy Village, Ambridge PA

When it comes to all the subjects I could write about, too often my curiosity exceeds my time and energy. So it proved on a visit with a close relative in Pittsburgh in October 2019, when we took a day trip to Old Economy Village, 18 miles away from the Steel City in the Beaver County town of Ambridge.

Despite my intention to write about this site, other matters got in the way, such as holidays, COVID-19, disruptions in my career, and other situations. For the longest time, I had forgotten about my time there.

I doubt if many people outside Pennsylvania have heard of this National Historic Landmark, let alone visited it. But this set of buildings tells a fascinating story of how one of the many religious sects that spring into being in 19^th-century America lived and worked communally.

If you want to learn how these believers demonstrated a spirit of entrepreneurship as they sought to live according to the dictates of their faith, viewing the 18 buildings from this community is an excellent place to start.

The accompanying photo I took while there shows the shoe shop. It’s part of the Mechanics’s Building, which also housed tailors and hat makers; for a time, printing operations; and underneath, a wine cellar.

While the Society (or, as they were called, the Harmonists) made and repaired shoes for themselves, it would also do so for the public on request. The footwear would then be sold in the organization’s store.

On display here are tools of the trade, including benches; clamps; adjustable tin patterns; knives, hammers, awls, and other materials for finishing the leather; and lasts that were individually sized to a person’s feet. (Until the 19^th century, believe it or not, one last was used for both left and right feet. Imagine the discomfort!)

What fascinates me as well about the Harmony Society, a sect of German Lutheran separatists, is its place in the history of American utopian communities. One, Brook Farm, founded by Bronson Alcott (yes, Louisa’s father) in 1842, foundered quickly.

Alcott would have done well to see how Old Economy Village under its leaders, the preacher George Rapp (1757-1847) and his adopted son Frederick Rapp (1775-1834), the community’s business manager, managed to thrive for so long.

Part of it goes back to the old real estate mantra “location, location, location.” The 3,000 acres that the Rupps and other Harmony Society leaders purchased were along the Ohio River, offering plenty of opportunities for shipping their products to the established Eastern states, as well as to growing midwestern and western markets via the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.

Moreover, the fertile soil made for excellent farming. Each household had its own garden which provided fruits, vegetables, and herbs.

Families, then, were self-sufficient—and the collective abundance was so great that politicians and businessmen in the area took notice. It was a vibrant community with a diversified economy that, as the saying went, placed “the agriculturalist beside the industrialist.”

The Beaver County location was the third that the “Harmonists” created in the United States. The first, in Harmony, PA, was founded in 1804. Eleven years later they moved to New Harmony, IN. After a decade, desiring more opportunity to sell their goods east and dismayed by unfriendly neighbors they moved back to Pennsylvania to a community they named “Harmony.”

(They then sold the Indiana land for $150,000 to the Welsh industrialist and social reformer Robert Owen, whose secular, utopian community collapsed after only two years.)

The Harmonists were already attracting considerable notice in their first two decades since coming to America, not always positive. Their practice of celibacy especially came in for biting criticism, notably from the English poet Lord Byron in his mock-epic Don Juan:

When Rapp the Harmonist embargo'd marriage
In his harmonious settlement (which flourishes
Strangely enough as yet without miscarriage,
Because it breeds no more mouths than it nourishes,
Without those sad expenses which disparage
What Nature naturally most encourages)—
Why call'd he 'Harmony' a state sans wedlock?
Now here I 've got the preacher at a dead lock.
 
Because he either meant to sneer at harmony
Or marriage, by divorcing them thus oddly.
But whether reverend Rapp learn'd this in Germany
Or no, 't is said his sect is rich and godly,
Pious and pure, beyond what I can term any
Of ours, although they propagate more broadly.
My objection 's to his title, not his ritual,
Although I wonder how it grew habitual.

Nevertheless, even though the number of Harmonists had already declined to about 500 by the time they settled again in Pennsylvania, the group prospered greatly, exporting their goods not just within the United States but also, by 1825, to 10 European countries. That wealth accumulated through shrewd early investments in the nation’s emerging coal, oil, and railroad industries.

Like the Shakers, the Harmonists had no trouble sustaining themselves economically, but their strict celibacy rules led to the end of the group at its Beaver County settlement. But visitors can still see today how they worked, lived, and even played (yes, the second floor of their Feast Hall served not just for meals but for musical performances on special feast days).