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Originally published in 1939
Some of this information may no longer be current and in that case is presented for historical interest only.
Edited by GET NJ, COPYRIGHT 2003
Left on this road is PHALANX, 2.4 miles (120 alt., 27 pop.), site of a widely known attempt to form a more perfect social order. In September, 1843, half a dozen families arrived, advance guard of the North American Phalanx, which was the most enduring and successful of a series of such colonies established in the United States. The members pooled their resources, bought a farm, and built a communal barracks. They set aside Brisbane Hall as the future site of the Gothic Tower of Babel, the Phalanstery planned by Fourier, French philosopher whose writings had inspired the movement, as the proper form of housing. Fourierism had been promoted in America by Albert Brisbane, father of the late Arthur Brisbane, Hearst editor and columnist. The elder Brisbane had interested Horace Greeley in it and had persuaded him to turn over a daily column in the New York Tribune for the propagation of the doctrine. A group of people, farmers and businessmen, chiefly from up-state New York, and a certain number of perpetually hopeful people who had tried Shakerism, Owenism, vegetarianism, and other popular movements of the day, established the North American Phalanx here with Horace Greeley as vice president of the association. Because of the proximity of this place to New York City and the number of journalists who were interested in the association, the experiment received wide publicity, some favorable and some unfavorable. Those hostile to the attempt to establish a more satisfactory way of living emphasized the ideas of the more eccentric members of the community and raised a horrified shout over the discussions and trials of saner costumes for women, more practical methods of education, unusual wage standards, and equal rights for women. The community prospered for a time but many of the farmers and businessmen eventually became dissatisfied with sharing the fruits of their industry with those they believed were contributing less labor. A disastrous fire in 1854 destroyed the mills, and was largely responsible for the final dissolution of the colony. All that remains today is the old HOTEL (private; visitors welcome), a weather-beaten, barn-like, two-story structure, standing well back from the highway in about the center of the hamlet. Alexander Woollcott, well-known raconteur, was born here.
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