Oneida Community Mansion House

The Oneida Community Mansion House is a museum that was once the home of the Oneida Community, a religiously-based socialist Utopian group led by John Humphrey Noyes. Noyes and his followers moved to the site in Oneida from Putney, Vermont in 1848, and lived at the Mansion House communally until 1880.

Oneida Community Mansion House

Building: 1907 postcard
Location Oneida, New York
Coordinates 43°3′37.28″N 75°36′18.63″W / 43.0603556°N 75.6051750°W / 43.0603556; -75.6051750Coordinates: 43°3′37.28″N 75°36′18.63″W / 43.0603556°N 75.6051750°W / 43.0603556; -75.6051750
Built 1848
Architectural style Late Victorian
NRHP Reference # 66000527
Significant dates
Added to NRHP October 15, 1966[1]
Designated NHL June 23, 1965[2]

Since the community's disbandment in 1880, the Mansion House has become a National Historic Landmark overseen by a non-profit organization chartered in 1987 by New York State Board of Regents. The Mansion House offers both permanent and changing exhibits, and guided tours. The collections at the 90,000 square foot Mansion House include the braidings of community member and folk artist Jessie Catherine Kinsley, as well as photographs and material objects from the Oneida Community.

The Mansion House has become a popular destination for vacationers and has guest rooms for overnight lodging, as well as apartments for residents.[3]

History

The Oneida Community Mansion House is located on 160 acres of land near the Oneida Creek in Madison County, New York. This land became available for purchase after the surrounding territory was acquired by the State of New York in a series of agreements with the Oneida Indian Nation in 1840 and 1842. The land was purchased by Jonathan Burt, an early convert to the religious doctrine known as "perfectionism." In 1847, Burt offered to make his land available for other Perfectionists to build an association.[4]

John Humphrey Noyes, founder of the Oneida Community

Burt wrote to John Humphrey Noyes, extending the offer to establish a community in Oneida. At the time, Noyes and his followers were living in Putney, Vermont in a group known as the Putney Association. The group lived communally, as one family sharing property and work, in a system they called "Bible Communism." However, their practice of complex marriage (a form of polyamory) was controversial. After Noyes was charged with committing adultery in Vermont, the group moved to Oneida in March 1848, becoming the Oneida Community.[5]

First Mansion House

Following the designs of trained architect Erastus Hamilton and the guidance of community founder Noyes, the first Mansion House was erected in the winter of 1848. The structure provided a larger space for the Oneida family after it quickly outgrew the two small farm houses and two log cabins left behind by the Oneida Indians. The majority of the work was done by the Community, which had a saw mill on-site and carpenters in the membership. A Community member recalled that "the building of a home was the first enterprise that enlisted the whole Community; and it was one in which all were equally interested. All labored; the women no less than the men."[6]

One of the Mansion House's most prominent features was the tent room, located on the third story. The 35 by 30 foot space consisted of twelve tents that conveniently denied members of isolation and encouraged social interactions.[7] Another important area of social gathering was at the common table that all members were required to eat at during meal times.

A few years after its construction, the first Mansion House became overcrowded and its members quickly realized the pressing need for more space. In its October 25, 1855 issue, the community newspaper, The Circular, appreciated that the "smallness of space has served as a compress on excessive individuality, and brought element of Communism;" However, the Community's population had reached one hundred and seventy members, and they had outgrown the space.[8]

New Mansion House

In 1861 the Community began construction of a larger, brick dwelling, under the guidance of Community member and architect Erastus Hamilton. The 1862 Brick Mansion House is 45 by 60 feet and three stories high. A south wing was added in 1869 and another edition was added in 1877-78 to accommodate the growing community, which eventually numbered close to 300 people.

The architecture of the Mansion House, and the process of designing the home, reflected the communal values prized by the Oneida Community. The ideas for the 1862 house were hotly debated in evening meetings, with the group eventually settling on a plan for an Italianate Villa-style structure. The first floor housed an office, reception room for visitors, a library, and a guest bedroom. There was also a first-floor family sitting room with private rooms on three sides. To the north was a tower 40 feet high, with its own access stair and entry[9]

The second floor's most prominent feature was the two-story Big Hall, the largest room in the Mansion House and the physical and social center of the Community.[10] The second floor also had an “upper-sitting room” above the family sitting room that was on the first floor. The Community's newspaper The Circular, described the room as one of the "coziest places in all of the house".[11] The second floor sitting room was double the ceiling height of its first floor counterpart, and was surrounded by two stories of private apartments or rooms, with access to third-floor rooms provided by a balcony that stretched along two sides of the room and overlooked the sitting area. Since the members practiced community of property, the bed rooms were quite simple and bare. Additionally, many of the members rotated their rooms periodically to avoid getting attached to a favorite room.[12] Still, the individual rooms provided a level of privacy in a communal environment and fit the community’s practice of complex marriage.[13]

Big Hall

The Big Hall at the Mansion House

The Big, or Family, Hall was designed to be the center of community life. The two-story hall was painted in trompe l'oeil style, with non-stationary benches on the first level, and room for an additional 200 on the third-story balcony bordering the top of the hall.[14] A stage was included at the front of the room for concerts, lectures, and entertainment. At eight o'clock every evening, members gathered in the Big Hall to receive instruction from Noyes, listen to readings, discuss community issues, and participate in the perfectionists' disciplining concept of mutual criticism. During the discussion of community issues, members were given the opportunity to voice their opinion on happenings within the community.

South Wing

The 1869 South Wing, constructed in Second Empire Style, was added to the Mansion when the Community inaugurated an intentional plan for members to have children. For many years, the Community practiced birth control and kept the birthrate purposefully low. By the late 1860s, Noyes and other Community members developed an interest in selective breeding. They hoped that religious devotion might be inheritable, and that they could pass on their own strong sense of spirituality to another generation. They called their eugenics experiment “stirpiculture.” The children born in the experiment were known as “stirpicults.”[15]

The South Wing of the Oneida Community Mansion House

Generally, children stayed with their mothers for nine months before moving to the South Wing, where they stayed under the care of teachers and other community members. Within the South Wing, children were separated by ages. The youngest were together in the Drawing Room, the oldest in the South Room, and children in between were in the East Room. Children had many toys—blocks, marble rollers, rocking houses, and homemade picture books, and received lessons in a variety of subjects. Although it was hoped that the children would be highly spiritual, it turned out that “the children were much like other children of the same age,” as one stiripicult later recalled. “The women who cared for us spent much of their time settling differences of opinion over who should have a certain toy.”[16]

Post-Community

Facing mounting criticism from outside the Community, and some internal dissension, the Utopian group voted to disband and became a joint-stock company known as Oneida Community, Ltd. in 1880. Their manufacturing enterprises included canned fruit, animal traps, sewing silk, and silverware.[17] Known later as Oneida Limited, the company became a top producer of silverware in the twentieth century.

After the Community voted to disband, ex-members and their descendants continued to live in the Mansion House. They turned small, individual rooms into suites to accommodate a less communal lifestyle.[18] The non-profit Oneida Community Mansion House acquired the property from Oneida Ltd in 1987.

References

  1. ↑ Staff (2007-01-23). "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service.
  2. ↑ "Oneida Community Mansion House". National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. 2007-09-15.
  3. ↑ Barnard, Beth Quinn (2007-08-03). "The Utopia of Sharing in Oneida, N.Y.". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2016-03-11.
  4. ↑ Klaw, Spencer (1993). Without Sin: The Life and Death of the Oneida Community. 1993: Allen Lane The Penguin Press. p. 72. ISBN 0-7139-9091-0.
  5. ↑ Klaw, Spencer (1993). Without Sin. p. 72.
  6. ↑ Worden, Harriet M (1950). Old Mansion House Memories by One Brought Up in It. Utica, New York: Widtman Press. p. 5.
  7. ↑ Robertson, Constance Noyes (1970). Oneida Community: An Autobiography, 1851-1876 (First ed.). New York: Syracuse University Press. p. 32.
  8. ↑ Robertson, Constance Noyes (1970). Oneida Community: An Autobiography, 1851-1876 (First ed.). New York: Syracuse University Press. p. 33.
  9. ↑ White, Janet (Fall 1993). "Building Perfection: The Relationship between Physical and Social Structures of the Oneida Community". Syracuse University Library Associates Courier. XXVIII: 34.
  10. ↑ Cape, Francis (2013). We Sit Together: Utopian Benches from The Shakers to the Separatists of Zoar. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. p. 52.
  11. ↑ Robertson, Constance Noyes (1970). Oneida Community: An Autobiography, 1851-1876 (First ed.). New York: Syracuse University Press. p. 45.
  12. ↑ Cape, Francis (2013). We Sit Together: Utopian Benches from The Shakers to the Separatists of Zoar. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. p. 53.
  13. ↑ White, Janet (Fall 1993). "Building Perfection: The Relationship between Physical and Social Structures of the Oneida Community". Syracuse University Library Associates Courier: 35.
  14. ↑ Bates, Albert (Summer 1997). "The Oneida Mansion House: When Architectural Designs Fosters Community Goals". Communities Magazine. Retrieved 14 October 2014.
  15. ↑ Jennings, Chris (2016). Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism. New York: Random House. p. 363. ISBN 978-0-8129-9370-7.
  16. ↑ Noyes, Pierrepont B. (1965). My Father's House: An Oneida Boyhood. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. p. 24.
  17. ↑ Edmonds, Walter D. (1948). The First Hundred Years, 1848-1948. Oneida, Ltd. p. 28.
  18. ↑ Carden, Maren Lockwood (1971). Oneida: Utopian Community to Modern Corporation. New York: Harper & Row. p. 155.

External links

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