"Build, Therefore, Your Own World": The New England Village as Settlement Ideal Author(s): Joseph S.

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"Build, Therefore,Your Own World": The New EnglandVillage as SettlementIdeal

Joseph S. Wood Institute forGeographical Sciences,GeorgeMason University, VA 22030 Fairfax, Abstract. The purpose of thisstudyof the idea of the New England villageis to account forthe nineteenth-century invention of the villagetradition and itsassociatedsettlement ideal. Interpretation of landscapesand texts buildson existing work on themorphogenesis of the material villagein the earlynineteenth century. I assess the role of nineteenth-century elites-writers, travelers, lithographers, landscapearchitects, socialreformers, andsocialscientists-in inventing a geographical past thatneverexisted,withspecial emphasison Concord,Massachusetts and Litchfield, Connecticut, elite places thenas now. I thendiscuss the intertwining of the invention of the villagetradition withthe creationof an appealingsettlement ideal within the context of Romanticism and economicchange. The traditionbothjustified the pastand legitimated the present. The settlement ideal emerged froma relationship between Jeffersonian agrarianism incounterpoise with industrial urbanismin thecontext of an urbanconception of country-"having both" in Emerson's terms.The conclusionthat nineteenth-century Romantics invented the New England village tradition, and in so doingcreatedan enduringsettlement ideal, exemplifies how we create our own geographies,those in our minds approximations ofthoseon theground, and vice versa. Words: NewEngland Key village, invention oftradition, elitist construction, settlement ideal,place andcommunity. can tradition ofNewEngland covenanted community, cultural enlightenment, anddemocratic self-government. Few historical or geographical descriptions oftheUnited fail States to refer to the formative communities served by the villageof tree-shaded greensurrounded by a tall-steepled church and white-clapboarded shops and dwellings. Few failto illustrate this tradition with a proper woodcutorphotograph (Fig.1). The village traditionis invented.Puritan communities werecommonly dispersed settlements (J. Wood 1982).Whileconstructing compact centervillages in the nineteenth century (J. Wood 1984),Romantic New Englanders also invented a tradition ofPuritan antecedence,in which villages served as geographical metaphor forinherited pastoral ideals.RalphWaldo Emerson, preeminent voiceofhisage (Leary 1980, 27),articulated a settlement idealincorporating thebenefits ofcity and country alike(Emerson 1910,506)."Build, therefore, your ownworld," he wrotein Nature (1836,94). Contemporary elitestriedjustthat, justifying the pastand lethe present. gitimating Writers codifieda regionalsenseofplace and diffused widely a Romanticvisionof villagelifein New England, attaching itto new nineteenth-century center villages and thereby confusing sentiment with settlement. Landscape architects and socialreformers, meanwhile, employedcentervillages as experiential modelsand contrived placesto reform habits of humaninteraction, affirming thesettlement idealand suggesting a suburban vision. The settlement ideal is perpetuated todayin gentrified centervillages likeLitchfield, Connecticut. The suburban visionenduresas well, lived in fashionable center villageslike Concord, Massachusetts,expressed across America's landscapeas residential subdivision

we have gained.The villageis the material of a strongly held Amerisymbol

Annals of theAssociation ofAmerican Geographers, 81(1),1991,pp. 32-50 ? Copyright 1991 by Association of American Geographers

HENew a past England village represents

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New England Village as Ideal

33

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Figure 1. Lenox,Massachusetts, c. 1835.Thisnineteenth-century viewevokesthe villagetradition of covenantedcommunity, cultural and democratic The centervillageof Lenox, self-government. enlightenment, inthenineteenth formed NewEngland virtue epitomized for elites whoflocked totheBerkshires century, literary later in the century. [John Warner Barber] Source:American Antiquarian reprinted bypermission. Society,

"villages," and recently recoveredin "neotratownplanning. ditional" Thisstudyof the idea of the New England villageas elitist construction, Romantic tradition,settlement ideal,and suburban visionis an interpretation of a range of villagelandscapes juxtaposedwithliterary and scholarly I distinguish of town texts. betweentraditions The New England townwas deand ofvillage. signedas an organizational instrument of land formation. Ithasserved division andcommunity withthe gridas a Neoclassical, funcgallantly tional settlement. modelfor trans-Appalachian Villages, on the other hand,were secondary settlements ofNew England the towns, bearing connotation of nucleatedform the onlyafter nineteenthRevolution. WhileNew England's century villageslargely comprisean ordinary landscape, ourcollective viewofthat landscape has been shaped by elites.Hence I focuson thevillage as an eliteconstruction, one derived inthe from a Romantic tradition thatflowered a culturally antebellum period.Villages housing enlightened populace became symbolic models for a place-seated pastoral community durI employ two ing this NewEngland Renaissance. inparticular, villages Litchfield, Connecticut and

Concord, Massachusetts, as epitomesof the settlement ideal. As elite places in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as today, they truly weremodelsfor, and Romantic reconfigurations of,thevillage tradition, whichI relate to place-making. Thisstudy exemplifies that we create ourowngeographies, or not, consciously and thatgeographies in our mindsare crude approximations or inelegant models of those on the ground, and vice versa.In creating our own geographies, we justify those of the past and legitimate thoseof the present (Cosgrove 1982). Literally and figuratively, we build our own worlds.

The Village in American Culture

Scholarsrecognizea numberof important American settlement experiences, and several settlement forms standas important regional icons(Meinig1979;Stilgoe1983).Certainly the Medievalbastide andtheNeoclassical grid have had seminalmorphological influence on the American settlement landscape(Vance 1977). Amongthese settlement experiencesand in-

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Wood inwhichinhabitants settlement werelinked by a set of complex interpersonal relationships (Rutman 1986).Thisperspective, in whichsettlement form and socialorganization were inis important timately interconnected, to be certain, but as conventionally expressedit is ahistorical and ageographical. It confuses sentiment the and settlement, failing to appreciate material nature ofthe place as bothshapedby and shaper of those interpersonal relationships-or to quote Meinig (1979,188), "at once a moldand mirror ofthe society thatcreate[d] [it]."Likemosttraditions, the villagetradition is a deeplyheld idea standing in stark contrast with the actual landscape (Hobsbawm and Ranger1983).

fluences, the New England village, ritualized in Thanksgiving holidays, Christmas cards, and innumerable romantic novelsand movies, has a in American special standing culturalhistory and geography. In the collective the historAmerican mind, icalNewEngland village represents a newEden or second Zion. It is,sayshistorian Page Smith (1966,3), thearchetype ofAmerican small towns, in a pestanding forcommunity forebearance riod of strict political, religious, and societal discipline and economic stability. Frugaland thrifty, industrious and hardbitten, Puritans employedvillagesto convertwilderness and establisha Jeffersonian middle landscape of rugged-individual yeomen formedinto selfgoverningcommunities.The most intense community experienceof moderntime,the villageremains a reminder of lost innocence Thevillage theProt(Smith 1966,13). expressed ethicand theEnlightenment estant idealofthe nobleyeoman. The village foremwas setting battled farmers first blowsfor American striking independence, making itas wellan expression of the geographical of American iconography nationalism. Analogous to the Greekpolis,the villagehoused independent ecclesiatical societies,academies, and lyceums, giving itan aura of cultivation "The village and discernment: school-houseand the villagechurchare the monuments of our republicanism; to read,to write, and to discussgraveaffairs, in theirprimary assemblies, are the licentious practices of wroteEdward Everett our democracy," (1824, 16). The village, some wouldarguethen, wasthe highpointin humansocial and political evowith thewestlution (Westbrook 1982).Ranked ern farm and the stateuniversity, thisutopian has been viewed, ironically, community as a most effective answerto the anti-American of Communism propaganda and (Chamberlain ofsymbolic landFlynt 1957,1).One ofa troika scapes-the othertwo, mainstreetand subcontinuity" (Meinig1979,165),as the cultural ideal of a place-seated,pastoralcommunity. "The cult of the New England village"is the "most distinctively New Englandish contributionto the American social ideal" (Buell1986, 305). The linebetweenrealand symbolic is fuzzy at best.Historians have conand geographers ventionally definedthe villageas a nucleated
urbia-the village carries "connotations of

Constructingthe Village Landscape

culWhatever thevillage meansinAmerican turalhistory and geography, itwas not,in the colonial period,the exceptionalist nucleated inthetradition. New form settlement portrayed freesettlers England soughtland to establish holdfarms within exclusive communities. They with a variety ofsettlement forms experimented withvariousEnglish antecedents (Allen1982), of setand bythe close of the first generation tlement standardized (the 1660s),a relatively formof settlement had developed: New Enand chartered townsas inglanders organized oflanddivision struments andecclesiastical and Edward political organization. Channing (1884) also noteda century ago thatNew Englanders chartered as second-order ecclesiastivillages a chartered cal parishes, eitherbysubdividing or bygranting a townnewtertown'sterritory I italicize on the settlement vilfrontier. ritory ecclesiastical as the lageas second-order parish, termwas commonly used in the colonialrecords of Massachusetts (Records1853-54)and Connecticut (PublicRecords1850-90),to disthe colonialtermfromthe contemtinguish whichconnotesnucleated settleporary term, mentform. Liketowns, were instruments villages of settlement, and liketowndwellers, villagers rarely formedcompactsettlements (J.Wood 1982). Rather theylaidout towns and villages as communities offreehold farmers on dispersed, single-family farmsteads, forming a corporation

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New England Village as Ideal

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takenin 1776.Concordwas one ofthefewinland urbanplaces 2. A viewof Concord,Massachusetts Figure henceitsmilitary importance in1775.[S. Hill] Source:American Antiquarian thecolonialperiod, Society, during bypermission. reprinted

to and an ecclesiastical parish-not dissimilar whatone could havefoundat thetimein parts social web of England (Thirsk 1967). A strong and a highdegree of localized economic inand altercourse definedthese communities successfully despite lowed them to function offarmsteads. Townsand villages alike dispersal had a center, wherewere locateda meetinga tavern.Community house and occasionally which interaction was focusedon the center, inthecontemporary sense wasnotitself a village of the term. Boundariescircumscribed and theexclusive community roadsinterconnected or town,whose settlethatcomprised village an intertwining of comreflected mentform actions that desires andindividualistic munalistic relationcontinues todayto shape Americans' shipwiththe land(Stilgoe1983,211-19). in settleRegionaland temporalvariations the colonialperiod, mentform existedduring Englishsource regions reflecting different

in differences (Bowden 1989) and functional viland fishing economicbase. Coastaltrading and inalso farmed, lages,in whichresidents alongvaluable offarmers, terior concentrations were valleys, river landinwidealluvial intervale of eighteenthA handful not uncharacteristic. centurynucleatedvillagesinlandfromtideValleytheConnecticut and awayfrom water and in Massachusetts Concordand Worcester inConnecticut-were and Litchfield Windham seats).These urbanplaces (county shiretowns lots(churchland formed about meetinghouse a fewscore inand sustained at towncenters) and reemployedin administration dividuals (Fig.2). But dispersal lated economic services landsettlement townandvillage characterized throughout scapesacrossmostofNewEngland the colonialperiod(J.Wood 1982). Not until did "village" clearly century the nineteenth (Stilgoe1989, designatenucleatedsettlement 79).

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36

Wood an Americaincreasingly dominated by industrial capitalism, as RalphWaldo Emerson (1835, 41) noted."Of late years, the growth of Concordhasbeen slow[;], without navigable waters, without mineral riches, without anyconsiderable millprivileges, the natural increase of her population is drainedbythe constant emigration of her youth."Yet otherssoughtplaces like Concord, increasingly choosingthem as homewhiledoingbusiness elsewhere (Hudson 1904,4; Binford 1985).

Center Villages
NewEnglanders first formed present-day villagesat colonialtowncenters after the American Revolution as early manifestations of urbanization undermercantile Excapitalism. tra-local exchange basedon commercialization ofagriculture drewpreviously nondispersed, farm activities to towncenters, wheretheylocatedaroundmeetinghouse lotsto form "centervillages." Themeetinghouse andtavern were already locatedatthetown-center. Townroads converged at the center, focusing theresocial and economic intercourse. Increased trade, and communication transportation, facilitated growth and development ofan interwoven and settlement commercialized ofwhich landscape centervillages were hubsof activity (J.Wood 1984). Mostcentervillagers oftheearly nineteenth were neither century wealthy traders norproletarian workers. They were membersof an middleclassthatfilled emerging, enlightened mercantile and artisanal ever-widening niches in the periodof the earlyrepublic (Ryan1981; Gilmore 1989;Jaffee 1990).Architectural fashiondictated what villagers to house constructed their enterprises and their families. Irregularity of villagemorphology reflected to adaptation siteconditions and the road network thathad been laiddown forotherreasonsin an earlier time.Meetinghouselots became town commonsorgreens with disestablishment ofchurch and town.Centervillagesunderwent continued construction, and after a periodof some economicstability had set in bythe 1830s,residentsundertook villagebeautification. They seeded greens, built walls about burying and generally discarded therubble of grounds, recentbuilding Wood 1986)(Fig.3). (J. The NewEngland conlandscape underwent in the nineteenth siderable reconfiguration ecocentury (J.B. Jackson 1972),suggesting nomicdecline.Marginal areas did agricultural farm butagriculturexperience abandonment, al productivity elsewhere in NewEngland even increased (Bell 1989). Industrialization also marked the landscape, reconfiguring the urban ofNewEngland. emerging system Hence, manycentervillages achieved the heights of their commercial successeven as theyunderwent villagebeautification. Well situatedfor intheperiodoftheearly agricultural marketing were misplaced in republic, many and miscast

Inventing the Village Tradition

Theearly nineteenth witnessed both century in New England the building of centervillages Neoclassicism to Romanand a transition from ticism as cultural ecoidea intheEnglish world, nomicchange stimulating both. Romanticism of the organic, encouragedthe orchestration of picturesquecomevokingan impression and employing a preternatural landplexity scapeas sourceofhistoricist metaphor (Conron 1973,271-74).Fusing of history and categories intheliterary fiction, itechoed an interest uses of the past and fostered a nostalgic empathy for NewEnglanders' authoritarian ancestors and theirself-governing communities (Buell 1986, Choate 209). It was not out of place forRufus to deliver an oration at Salemin 1833entitled "The Importance of Illustrating New England History bya Seriesof RomancesLikethe WawhichsumNovels"[ofSirWalter verly Scott], the popularopinionof the day(Buell marized 1986,208).WhatChoate proposedwas no less of place and invention thanthe appropriation the past and legitimate of tradition to justify the present (Cosgrove1982). New Englandmanifestation Romanticism's invention of the region presagedthe literary of local lifeand landscapeto and exploitation literary ends through traditions of landscape poetry,regionalprose, and commemorative NewEnglanders discourse (Buell1986).Literate of the "villageenlightenment" (Jaffee 1990) wereencouraged andempowered to buildnew and larger worlds. HeedingEmerson, theydid. Evenas theybuiltcentervillages-and as agricultural retreat and industrial expansionalteredthelandscape-village becamemetaphor for inherited idealsofstable Puritan community

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New England Village as Ideal

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inthefirst decadesofthenineteenth wereformed 3. NewCanaan, villages c. 1835.Center Connecticut, Figure of the beautification beginto undertake about meetinghouse lots.Not untilthe 1830sdid villagers century Society, Antiquarian reBarber] Warner [John constructed. Source:American villages theyhad onlyrecently bypermission. printed

No conspiracy anddemocratic society. ensued, of the but all could see local manifestations changesEmerson (1835,41) had notedin Concord. Romanticists who lived in, observed, wroteabout, and portrayed villagesingenuously fused New England-as-tradition with nineteenth-century village-as-setting to invent New England village-as-tradition. Romanticism as glorified New England village ways, creating orthodoxy the villagetradition thatservedas reflection of botha gloriouspastand a brimming future. Literary elites-CatherineMaria Sedgwick, Nathaniel Hawthorne, HenryWard Beecher, Harriet Orne Jewett, BeecherStowe, and Sarah forinstance-created the necessary illusion of steadfast villagelife.Travelers and social observers likeTimothy Dwightand Anne Royal verbally describedan attractive scene, which lithographers, especially John WarnerBarber, Emerson capturedsuperbly. and HenryDavid

Thoreau encourageda complementary, harmonious, pastoral ideology. Socialreformers like Catharine Beecher and CharlesLoringBrace invokedthe villageas model fordomesticity likeAnand community. Landscapearchitects drew JacksonDowning, Calvert Vaux, and Frederick LawOlmsted fabricated an appealing inpursuit scholars suburban aesthetic. Historical ofthe origins of the New England townmeeting, Joel Parker, Herbert Baxter Adams, and Edward Channing,for instance,articulateda Ameras well.Collectively, scholarly tradition cenicanstransposed the nineteenth-century ter villagewitha colonial instrument of land a divisionand orderlysettlement, inventing geographical past thathad neverexisted.Inof literary, terwoven, complementary strands interest artistic, and scholarly projected the andsource center village bothas physical setting of communalbonds back to apocryphal seventeenth-century origins, whencecame legit-

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38

Wood

novelsespecially 1982,66). Hawthorne's drew to smothering intolerance. attention Puritan Yet reality could not dissuadereadersof the Romantic virtues of New England villagelife. Villageas GeographicalMetaphor Centervillages caughttravelers' eyes.ScotsmanJohn Duncan(1823,1,93) notedthe "sinRootsoftheNew England village tradition as gularneatness"of New England and villages, second Eden or new Zion go deep. One can Benjamin Silliman (1824,40), passingthrough discern the idea in WilliamBradford's "Of Sedgwick's Lenox in 1819, observed that Plymouth Plantation" [1647], butitflowered in "probably no small townin England isso beauthe Romanticperiod. The nostalgicpastoral tiful as Lenox,norhavethe Europeans, ingenHill"byNeoclassical "Greenfield establishmen- eral,any adequate idea of the beautyof the tarianminister and scholar Timothy Dwight New-England villages."To Anne Royal(1826, (1794)anticipated Romantic poetry (Westbrook 294) "the villages, the lofty whitesteeples of 1982, 16, 21; Buell 1986, 88). Describing the the churches, the trees, peeping up through dispersedrural settlement space of late-coloor fivemilesdistant, perhapsthree, four, may nial New England, the poem enthusiastically give some idea of the scenery[of the Concelebrated theNew England wayoflife (Stilgoe necticutValley]."Likewise,NathanielHaw1989, 78). Dwight's1790s Travels (1821-22),a thornerecorded in his American Note-Books sober,Neoclassical marked landscape inventory walksthrough (1897)blissful the EssexCounty, with Romanticindulgences, further demonMassachusetts of the 1830s, a countryside New England strated towns as thehighest form In his1831 countryside punctuated byvillages. ofcivilization yetachieved(Buell1986,92, a Steeple" in Salem,Massachu319). "Sightsfrom Dwight spawned,intellectually and spiritually, setts, Hawthorne (1900,1:259)observed: severalsubsequentgenerations of Romantic In threeparts of thevisible circlewhosecentreis boostersof the New Englandtradition, who I discern this spire, cultivated white fields, villages, celebratedNew England villagelifeand landcountry seats, thewaving lineofrivulets, little placscape. id lakes,and here and there rising ground,that wouldfain be termed a hill. Catherine MariaSedgwick's A New novella, Tale (1822),was the first England noteworthy One might obtainsuch a picturesque view, fictional depictionof New England villagelife we learnfrom lithographers, because theland(Westbrook 1982,57-64). Only by the 1820s, scapewasopen andclearedmuchmoreso than with inpublishing changes andtheliterary martoday(Barber1838,1839; Bartholomew 1858). ket,could professional writers reacha national Emerson "The healthof (1836,21) noted that, audience and supportthemselvescommerthe eye seems to demanda horizon.We are ciallyin theirart(Kelly1984).A New England nevertired, so longas we can see far enough." Taleis,then, formultiple reasons, important in NewEnglanders could Early nineteenth-century Americanregional literature, the reflecting indeed see farenoughin the open landscape. parallel developments ofprofessionalism, comButlithographers ofthe1830sand after, tasked mercialism, and literary expression of regional withcapturing the essence of New England's self-consciousness (Buell1986,4).Ithelpedfuralsosought filled intheir towns, space to record therto makeSedgwick's adoptedtownofLenwoodblock prints. Center villageswith tallox, Massachusetts (see Fig.1) the literary seat steepled churchesaccommodatedthis need oftheBerkshires for theremainder ofthenineandbecamelithographic as wellas literary icons teenthcentury (D. Wood 1969).In thiswork, of New England lifeinthe popularimagination shearticulated thebasis for a cultofdomesticity of the nineteenth century (see Fig.3). and socialreform bysucceedingin conveying the notionthatNew England life village was "a mostfavorable milieufornurturing of human A Usable Past happinessand virtue"(Westbrook 1982, 64). Paradoxically, notall glossedover degeneracy Concord, Massachusetts and Litchfield, Conin the rural countryside-and slovenliness, necticut servedthe need fora usable past in idleness,poverty, habitualdrunkenness, and Romantic literature. Among thevery eliteplacviolenceofsome of itsinhabitants (Westbrook es of the lateeighteenth and earlynineteenth

imizationof the nineteenth-century worlds New England eliteswere building.

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New England Village as Ideal

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centuries, they provided modelsfor thevillage tradition andcameto epitomize thesettlement ideal. East-coast, liberal, Unitarian, and Transcendental Concord and Connecticut Valleyinspired,conservative,CalvinistLitchfield reflectedsectariandifferences of the early nineteenth century (Buell 1986,261). As sectarian division cosblurredin an increasingly mopolitan New England, bothbecame central elementsin the literary landscape of nineNew England, teenth-century Concord as archetypein the first halfof the century and in the second half. Litchfield as inspiration were neither Concordand Litchfield unique literary havens,nor were theyremovedfrom the ferment of change in nineteenth-century New England. Likecentervillages acrossNew England, they underwent wrenching economic of and socialadjustments-commercialization oflabor, elaboration ofdivision rise agriculture, ofa middle oftown class, and disestablishment and church.But these villages were different from othercentervillages as well. Theywere like Sedgwick'sLenox,especially shiretowns, important, higher-order places housingelites inthecountryside of nineteenth-century New wereamongthehalfEngland. Moreover, they dozen or so placesthathad been inlandurban inthelatecolonialperiod;theyindeed villages had a colonialpast.Concordlayin close proximity to Boston, comingeventually to serveas an urban thecity. residence beyond Litchfield's residents literally reconfigured the place as a Romantic ofthesettlement embodiment ideal. ItwasinTranscendental Concord,argueslithistorian Alfred Kazin(1988,48),thatnaerary artand religion. Emturebecamean American erson, like Hawthorne,Thoreau, Bronson came to and William Alcott, Ellery Channing, hassugVanWyck Brooks Concord, (1936,286) attraction thatseemed to gested, "bya natural Concord residein the tranquil atmosphere." wasthefirst settled towninland from tidewater in Massachusetts Bayand, by the nineteenth small the mostfamous townin Amercentury, its ica. It proved a proper Romantic setting; old cultural gentle200-year landscapestimuof its famous lated and mirrored the writing whoconceptualized thescene insoresidents, terms. Emerson's Concordview, rephisticated forinportedinNature (1836,10-11),suggests, stance, both the qualityof the scene and ofthe Transcendental ofgesomething origin notionof landscape. ographers'

Whenwe speakofnature inthismanner, we have a distinct but more poeticalsense in mind.We meanthe integrity of impressions made by manifoldnatural objects.It is thiswhichdistinguishes the stickof timber of the wood-cutter, from the tree of the poet. The charming [Concord]landscapewhich I sawthis morning, isindubitably made up ofsometwenty or thirty farms. Miller ownsthis field, Lockethat, and Manning the woodlandbeyond.Butnoneofthem ownsthelandscape. There isa property inthehorizon whichno manhasbut he whose eye can integrate all the parts, thatis, thepoet.Thisisthebestpart ofthesemen'sfarms, yetto thistheir land-deeds givethemno title. Thoreau, too, found Concord an ideal world in which to live--his cottage at Walden Pond was located in an extensive wood only a mile and a halfsouth of Concord's commercial core but was, in Thoreau's (1854, 87-88) words, "as faroffas manya region viewed nightly by astronomers." Walden portrayed a village-centered landscape of a settled core surrounded of fieldand forest. Thisfriedbysuccessive rings egg image of center yolk in the midst of encirclingwhite is classic village-as-tradition. Yet, too, "VirgilianConcord" (Brooks 1936, 283) had long been more cosmopolitan than other center villages. Concord had been the leading inland urban place in eastern Massachusetts in the colonial period. Rebels had stored arms in Concord, destinationof the infamous British assault of April,1775. Throughout the British occupation of Boston, it served as the site of Harvard College. The Town of Concord had all the virtuesof the ruralcounabout it,while the center villageofContryside cord had many of the amenities of Salem or Boston. Emersonand Thoreau builtworlds,the idyllicimage of which, like most romanticimages, was fuzzy. Concord, by the 1840s, could encompass both Walden Pond and an urban place connected to the world beyond by the FitchburgRailroad (Fig. 4). in the earlynineteenthcenturywas Litchfield a bustling, urbane place as well (Fig.5). The early settlement and shiretown for Northwestern Connecticut, it had a law school and was an importantpublishing center before the Revolution. During the war, American military operationsbetween the Hudson and Connecticut Riverswere directed fromLitchfield. To Timin the 1790s, othyDwight(1821-22, 109),writing Litchfieldranked not far behind older Connecticut Valleytowns in civic and religiousvirtue. Litchfieldprovided an ideal incubator for

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40

Wood

Figure4. Centralpartof Concord,Massachusetts, c. 1835. Cosmopolitan Concord,to whichEmerson had movedin 1834,was an archetype forthevillage tradition. [John Warner Barber] Source:American Antiquarian Society, reprinted bypermission.

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from Litchfield Chestnut servedas literary and social 'igure 5. Eastviewof Litchfield, Hill,c. 1835.Bustling virtue modelof domestic and village Warner Source:American tranquility. [John Barber] Antiquarian Society, reprinted bypermission.

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New England Village as Ideal

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inthemiddle that blossomed a literary tradition century. nineteenth of itsminister reminiscences The Litchfield at Yale,prostudent Lyman Beecher,Dwight's writing of hischilforthe fictional videdgrist aspiredto theideologdren.Theyconsciously of preindustrial villagelifethey ical retrieval 1982,78-81; Buthere(Westbrook hadknown BeecherStowe'snosell 1986,206-07).Harriet talgicOldtownFolks(1869) idealized a closeCalvinist village ofthepost-Revolutionary knit, whenmost suchplaceswerejustformperiod, lots,and alingabout colonialmeetinghouse colonial ideal of a Winthrop's luded to John 1982, 103-08). "cityupon a hill"(Westbrook HerPoganuc People(1878)evenmoreself-conways, village focuseson New England sciously lifeof a culwithemphasis on the intellectual tivated people (Kelly1984,83). Stowepresenttownand itspeople with ed theLitchfield-like zest, echoing Dwight'senthusiasm optimistic town forNew England and the New England 1982,108-13). (Westbrook HenorVillage inNewEngland, Life Norwood; novel, ryWardBeecher's(1868)CivilWar-era of picthe continued importance emphasized values.Despitenineturesque place on human teenth-century change in lifeand landscape, yet and hilltowns neighborhoods "The remote institutions, cusmorals, retainthe manners, of the fathers. The interior and religion toms, of New England are herbrood-combs" villages for which Beecher Thenovel, (Beecher 1868,2). sum of was advanced the then unheard-of in New England that wasso influential $30,000, of Dedthe southPrecinct (or second parish) Massachusetts tookthenameofNorwood ham, as a separate, suburban-Boston whenchartered townin 1872 (Tolles 1973, 17-18; Westbrook mean1982,78-94; Kelly1984,2). Litchfield, prime.Unlike while,was past its commercial Concord or Norwood,the hilltop villagewas Itwas left to to direct raillinkages. inaccessible emas a Romantic "1summer people" to restore in a "coof New England tradition bodiment lonial"village (Butler 1985). Reflection Romantic [1856](1906,9: Thoreauwrotein hisJournal "I have nevergot over mysurprise 160) that, thatI should have been born into the most and in the estimable place in all of the world,

verynickof time, too." The riseof centervillagesin the early nineteenth century was a responseto an urbanizing world. The generation of New Englanders who formed centervillages in the nineteenth century saw traditional ways of liferapidly withdraw from the onslaught of individual enterprise, industrial opportunism, Inthe larger and mechanical prowess. context, sentimental Leo Marx(1964,226) pastoralism, has written, "enabled the nationto continue itspurposeas thepursuit ofrural defining happiness while devotingitselfto productivity, wealth, and power."Similarly, ThomasBender (1975, 14) has convincingly argued,New Englandelites, harmonization" seeking "symbolic of cityand country, were simultaneously crethematinga positiveurbanvision.Villagers selvespropelledthe machineonward, steaming down ironrailspast Walden Pond, along the pathThoreauwalkedto Concord'scenter NewEnglanders village. Although lamented the itwasNewEngrural oftheir passing landscape, land's center villagerswho were not supfarmers porting marginal and who were buildingmills and railroads. Theyfoundthe source oftheir comcultural enlightenment and their mercial intheir enterprise Puritan Coheritage. lonialfathers in Bostonand Salem and New worldliness. after Haven, all,hadhardly spurned They had, in theirfashion, quite successfully theeconomicand cultural laida foundation for of the nineteenth development century. The Romantic reinventing ofPuritanism, with all of its "Jekyll and Hyde aspects,"and the creationof the myth of Puritan antecedence were important parallels to the formation of the villagetradition (Buell1986,193).Puritans had established social order,economic security, and local self-government, employing villagesto convert wilderness from the realmof evilto a worldof the sublime. Centervillages acrossNew England were first forming when Dwightwrote"Greenfield Hill" in 1794,and manywere in decline by mid-century when Thoreauwas at WaldenPond. Therefore, picof the past did torially adept representations not violatethe sensibilities unand historical of Romantic readers(Buell 1986, derstanding wereonlycaricatures 241).True, ofPuvillages ritan virtue intheworldofliterary imagination, but New Englanders took Romanticism serithe past,the characteristic ously. It justified economyof whichwas in decline,and legiti-

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42

Wood longsince proclaimed, were the basisforsuccessfulcommunity-thebulwarks of Puritan progress. Hundreds ofNewEngland center villageswere namedafter English agricultural villages.Colonialrecords had referred to villages, albeitsecondary ecclesiastical societies.Every inthelatenineteenth townhada center village century, many bytheend ofthecentury looking,purposefully or not,sufficiently antiquarian-like automobileshoppingstrips thatappear todayto have alwaysbeen there.Travel accounts of sightly center villagesand John WarnerBarber's(1838, 1839) center village also drawnin the 1830s(see Figs.1, sketches, 3, 4, 5),werewidely available. Americans could easily as transplanted recognizecentervillages Europeanvillages, and Romanticism encourto do so. NewEnglanders' aged them successes were attributed to theirsociopolitical system, and the presenceof centervillages confirmed it. Perpetuating the Tradition Thevillage tradition a richlode for suggested nineteenth-century scholars fascinated with the originof Americandemocracy.Tocqueville (1840)notedthatthe statewas the village writ large and brought thetownto serious scholarly attention. Brahmin histoNineteenth-century rians presented a saga of Anglo-Saxon cultural in the and New England superiority centrality formation ofAmerican nationhood (Buell1986, wentto extraor45). Romantic mythologizing to justify the past,attributing dinary lengths American to thesuccessofthe democracy itself town-meeting (Parker1866). George Perkins Marsh(1843) had tracedtown origins to the Goths.Herbert Baxter Adams(1882)made the case forcultural transfer fromSaxons in the of biological context evolution and natural selection. likeNoahPorChurch-origin theorists, ter(1883),were offended by theoriesof barbaricorigins, thefounding however, regarding ofthe New England and prosperity coloniesas providential andattributing sucorganizational cess to the Congregational Church.Liketheir ofthe 1870sand 1880s, European counterparts American scholarshad inadvertently particiformalization ofa previous patedinthenational generation's invented romantic tradition and Ranger1983).1 (Hobsbawm

matedthepresent. Out ofthisromantic vision, the idea of theNew England villagewas constituted and rooteddeeplyina newfound traditionof moralrectitude. The linkage betweenconstruction ofcenter villages and invention of villagetradition is so proximate in time,one might even ask ifthe idea of the village were a self-fulfilling prophecy whichNew Englanders wroteand copied. Discourses likeHorace Bushnell's "The Age of Homespun"(1851)-which Bushnell's mentor Dwightwould have found familiar-aroused interestin "improvement" of village landscapesafter B. Jackson midcentury (J. 1972,37). Romanticsreconstructedand transformed centervillages, likeLenox(D. Wood 1969;J.B. Jackson forand re1972,37), as both setting flection of nineteenth-century Romanticism. Centervillagers, as well as "summerpeople" from NewYork, arriving byrail Boston, or Philadelphia,observed "a pastorallandscape of smoothexpansesof shortgrass, borderedby translucent oftrees"(J. groves B. Jackson 1972, 101, 111).Theycontinued a "cultof the past" andhistoricized thelandscape to evokeanahistorical colonial ofwhich tradition, Litchfield was a mostimportant example(J.B. Jackson 1972, 113; Butler1985). That tradition was embellishedintheColonialRevival architectural style in the 1880s,epitomizing an agrarian society and inherited landscapecharacterized by"domesticity, dedication, difficult yetsatisfying laconnection withnature" bor,and a nourishing aesthetic was (Murphy 1985,10).Romanticism's intothe latter half of the century perpetuated in the picturesque bya delight (Gowans1964, to mold both the geo287, 339), continuing of Americans and their graphical imagination landscapeas well. observers Many late-nineteenth-century took a less thanapproving view of the New that as the rural Englandsetting, suggesting economyhad faded,so had some ofthe moral NewEngland rectitude. hadbecome "themost left-over selfconceivably place that rapidly Americacould provide"(Kazin transforming nowa metaphor for sen1988,136),thevillage timentalized pastoralism. By then, however, connectionbetweencentervillageand colonial community-betweenvillage-as-setting and NewEngland-as-tradition -was confounded. The literary elaboration ofthetradition had become reality. sources had Villages, literary

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New England Village as Ideal

43

Articulating the Settlement Ideal

tioninvolves notonlygrowth ofcitiesbutdevelopmentof linkages between country and city.If,in the encounterof country and city, the nineteenth-century urbanvisionof which In popularizing the New England village traBenderwrites was neverrealized, a settlement also articulated dition, Romanticists an Amerideal was. The encounterof country and city icansettlement idealof"having both,"thebest servedto establish a dialoguewhenceevolved ofcity alike.The American and country idea of a reconception ofplace and community integrating country allowwithcity to producea viring the advantages of the citywithoutliving tuousurbanideal had European seeds and cothere. lonialrootstock (Fries1977).The New England Emerson settlement idealinitsnineteenth-century desired thebestincountry manand city. "I wishto have rural ifestation derivedfroma paradoxical strength and religion expresfor and I wishcity sionofanti-urbanism. The nineteenth-century mychildren, facility and polish. I findwithchagrin centervillage was an earlyAmerican thatI cannot have both" manifes(Emerson1910, 506). He accepted the "ditation initsRomantic ofurbanization that guise ofcity chotomy justified the past. Indeed few centervillages and nature notas a conclusion actually survived theeconomictransformation butas a pointofdeparture" (Cowan 1967,183; see also Marx1964,23). The cityforEmerson of New Englandthat followed.The railroad servedas metaphor forlarger and deeperconmade it easy both to dispensewithscores of cerns:"The testof civilization is the powerof centervillages, like Litchfield, surplus and to the mostbenefit drawing interconnect a good numberof others,like out of cities,"Emersonwrote(Cowan1967,22; Porte1982,517). Concord,withmore successful places. Many Emerson strove to harmonize centervillages urbanism and nabecame picturesque, colonialto articulate theidealofa place embodyture, revival resort communities, likeLitchfield (Butingthe bestof city and nature alike.Concord, ler1985), andother center villages became"narecall, wasno rudevillage. Emerson's tivist worldbesuburbs," urbanresidencebeproviding came a middlegroundhaving likeConcord(Vance 1977,413). theattributes of yondthecity, agrarian in an increasingly as well,the ideal had been corrupted Bythen, community noninwhichthepresenceofcenfrom a concern withintegration agrarian of cityand society, tervillages to one ofremoval from to country. marked country change.Emerson city continued The paradoxical his "vocation"within expression ofanti-urbanism to fulfill the contextof reflects not a dichotomy of countryside Boston, onlyeighteenmilesaway.He treated and butthe essence ofwhatBender(1975,ix) city, Concord as a suburbof Boston,to whichhe has identified as a lostnineteenth-century urcommutedby railat leastonce a week (Marx banvision, 1964,231; Cowan 1967,6-7). theeffect of"the interplay ofa New in hismanner, Thoreau, version ofearly England American Emcomplemented ideagrarian alsand themodernizing a gentlelandscape forces erson, seeking with balancedbeassociated tween natural theindustrial and artificial and believing one city." Benderarguesthatthisurcould livepermanently banvision in neither to reform thecity citynorwilsought bybringing derness (Bender 1975, 89). Thoreau distinand country, and the respective city valuesfor guished countryfromwildernessand from whichtheystood, into a "contrapuntal relameanerrural in counteragricultural regions Thisvisionof cityscape remotefrom tionship." "theferment ofnovelideas"(Stilgoe1989,98). thenatural wasarticulated poisewith landscape no sentimental reflected pastoralbyEmerson and Thoreauand was manifested, Thisposition withitsthemeofwithdrawal ism, in the planningof Lowell, from Bender suggests, society into an idealized landscape.Thoreau'swas a in the social reform of Charles Massachusetts, and complexideal,a metaphor thoughtful and inthelandscape for architecture Loring Brace, of Frederick LawOlmsted.Olmstedsought, in a middle betweenand inTranscendenground talrelation to opposing a newurban to overcomedivergent forms ofcivilization and landscape, nature(Marx 1964, 23). Emerson's rural and urbanvaluesby bringing and Thoaspectsof reau'sconception the countryside to the city(Schuyler1986). ofcountry wasan urban conRobertGross(1984) has developed the arguception,one developed from the perspective of the city mentfurther, thaturbaniza(Bender1975,92). notingcorrectly

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44 Elaboration of the Settlement Ideal

Wood theartof landscapegardening wereespecially influential in crystallizing the settlement ideal intoa suburban vision (Downing1853;Gowans 1964,314; Stern1981,6; K. Jackson 1985,63). His 1850 plan fora "country village"appears remarkably likea centervillagein whichdestreets surround tached houses on tree-lined a landscapedpublicpark, whileVaux'sdesigns exhibitedconnectionto the naturalsetting, muchlikea hilltop centervillage formed over a generation in the earlynineteenth century (Fishman 1987,124-25). Olmsted, likehisfriend, reformer Brace,a protegeof Dwight's student Bushnell, contrived naturalistic space.Thecentervillage servedOlmstedas explicit model(J. B.Jackson He self-consciously 1972,111). sought a metaphor for inthesubtheurbanperfected urban in the culturally-constructed, looselybuiltcentervillageseated around the open, publicspace ofthe meetinghouse lot(Gowans 1964,313; Bender1975,163-87;Schuyler 1986). Successorsof the urban park tradition, like Horace W. S. Cleveland and Robert Morris Copeland,had also grownup in thispastoralurbannineteenth-century New England landscape (J.B. Jackson 1972,111). social reformers Nineteenth-century and had good reasonforutolandscapearchitects pianthinking. Challenged bytheperceivedills of the industrial city, theysoughtto replicate whichthey landscapes believedhadworkedin the pastto foster domesticity and community in the present.Theycollectively a fabricated and aesthetically-appealing socially-conscious ofresidential landscape communities that were the citygeographically, separatefrom socially, Albeit muchofthis politically, andattitudinally. Romantic urbanlandscape to materialize failed as the gridcapturedthe attention of less idealistic builders. the imaginative city Moreover, and complex settlement ideal was popularly debased as a sentimental pastoralism (Marx 1964).Symbolically, thecenter however, village had come to serveas modelforutopian settlementthatwould beneficially shape habitsof human interaction. Placeswhereone might try to "have both" suggesteda visionof whata suburbcould be. Suburban Vision ofcourse, themodern resEngland, invented idential suburband no doubt influenced the

Emerson'sand Thoreau's conception of country was elaborated on bysocialreformers in the decades that and landscapearchitects on DoCatharine Beecher'sTreatise followed. mestic Economy (1841)was the definitive statementon American domestic ideology, albeita one inwhich womenwereremoved patriarchal from placesofbusiness and industry. Thework and itssuccessoreditions and imitations articulatedthe idealofdomestic inan urharmony banizing worldassociatedwiththe detached, single-family, picturesque cottagein a bucolic setting (K. Jackson 1985,62-63; Fishman 1987, 122). Beecher was familiar with thatsetting, having grown up with sister Harriet andbrother in Litchfield in the early Henry decades of the century, whenLitchfield was quite cosmopolitan for the time. Relatedly, Charles Loring Brace,bornin Litchfield, tutoredby Dwight's of Olmsted, studentHorace Bushnell, friend and influenced byEmerson, used New England life community as a standard fororganic, spontaneouscommunity (Bender1975,129-57).He structured the asylum, ironically, as an orderly ofwhichLitchfield eighteenth-century village, was a rareexample, to standin contrast to the industrial city he observed at mid-century. The settlement idealhad come pragmatically to reflect"a moralpositionperfectly represented wildnor bythe imageofa rural order,neither of man's best hope" (Marx urban,as setting 1964,101). The middlegroundthatEmerson and Thoreaufoundin Concordwas a sliceofJohn Stilgoe's (1989) "borderland"-a literalfrontier and urban, whenceStilgoe betweenrural finds the originsof the American suburb.Proponentsof the earlyrural-cemetery movement where they soughtaccess to the borderland, contrived and the dead. spaces forthe living Mt. Auburn Cemetery, constructed outsideof Bostonin 1831,forinstance, presageda new, the emeropen urbanlandscapeand inspired inthemiddle movement genceofthecity-park of the nineteenth century (Schuyler 1986). Andrew Calvert and Jackson Downing, Vaux, LawOlmsted Frederick to landscape this sought middle on an artifact ground. Theyinsisted that evokedthenatural ofthe andorganic character life ecand bore theassociative perfect village clesiastical ofNewEnand educational features gland. Downing's treatises on rural and cottages

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New England Village as Ideal

45

offered an opporicalmeansoftransportation AmericanRomanticsuburbanvision (Vance communities homogeneous to establish tunity 1983,156; Fishman 1987).Em1977,403; Archer and live a betterliferemovedfromthe corinbothLontookmuchdelight erson(1856,28) of the city.New England influences rupting during visits countryside don and the English satas residential serving villages already center that"Enapprovingly in 1833and 1847,noting planned models for American wereready ellites Catharine Beeglandis a huge phalanstery."2 1981,5). as well(Stern communities residential taken Downing, and Vauxwereespecially cher, withthe were familiar Suburbanproponents Evangelical domesticideology" with"English thathad existedin the late fewcentervillages (Fishtradition ofdesign" andthe"picturesque and Conlike Litchfield century, eighteenth England man1987,121).All had rediscovered in ofor participants cord.Theywereobservers Revmemory ofthe American once the living of the new centervillages the development olutionhad passed.Whatdegree of influence in the early across New England thatformed of domesticideologyand English expressions whenvilcentury, decades of the nineteenth landscape may havehad,however, picturesque were fused.But as suburin context.Certainly lage and tradition can onlybe interpreted in the laterninebanization came to flourish incipientsuburbs had developed by 1820 urban expansionforced an teenth century, around New York,Philadelphia, and Boston, not necaccommodation of cityand country oftenoverdressed villagesenveloped by the Whathadbeen to theliking ofidealists. essarily advance of the city"(Vance "morphological had cityand country a visionforintegrating nearby villages Inthecase ofBoston, 1977,404). from the city. become a meansforretreating an advantahad,by the 1820s,come to offer aupolitical geous mixoflocalself-sufficiency, linkage for subtonomy, andadequateexternal the VillageTradition Diffusing 376; III, commuting. Dwight (1821-22,1, urban 80) had noted in the 1790sa set of road-cenofcourse,has longhad a proNew England, well-connected commercially to teredvillages of on the remainder influence become,Henry foundcultural wouldeventually Boston which has mostoftenbeen the U.S. The influence suburbs."UrBinford (1985)argues,"the first and no terms, and cultural invokedin literary communitiesin Cambridgeand ban-fringe literature hadmuchto do with for doubtRomantic those Charleston residential options offered New England-as-tradition nationally diffusing who chose to commuteto Bostonbeforethe The landscapeincentury. in the nineteenth in the urVillagers age of masstransportation. of as well.The tradition hasbeen great themselves ban fringe originatedresidential fluence of land divitownsas instruments employing defendedtheir politand passionately suburbs formation servedas both ical independence and culturalconformity. sionand community model fortrans-Apand functional figurative the settlement ideal even articulated Emerson Formalland companies palachiansettlement. Boston as expanding envelopedmoreand more towns, after NewEngland modeledcommunity and center villages.Concord, a countryside owes muchto landsubdivision and systematic from Boston than farther removed dozen miles settleofreplicative antecedents New England linkedby railin and comfortably Cambridge town grants.New Enment by rectangular the 1840s,became partof the urbanfringe. alterglanders carried New England ways and Villages, bythen,had become desirable across New Yorkand into the Old traditions all but those who to cities,excluding natives servtownand village and beyond, Northwest and religious sharedsocial,economic,ethnic, as well: modelsthere settlement ingas inchoate Social reformers and landscapearchiaffinity. intothe in"Wherever and exclusive theyhave penetrated bothpreaching community tects, .. theyhaveexhibited the terior ofthiscontinent, articulated dwelling, detached, single-family the and thearts, ofhusbandry theimplements of the New England village imagery Romantic at thevery hadcome axe, the plough,the forgeand the loom,and timesomecentervillages the of moralimprovement, stillnoble marks to serveas suburbanrefuges. Centervillages the school house,and the tallspiredirecting providedsubstanceif not source for a new head to theskies"(Kent1831,15).One cannot vision. American suburban the New England landscapeinfluence mistake camefrom bothcounThesuburban impulse WesternReserve,forinin the Connecticut and mechanand city. scenery Picturesque try

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46

Wood of Commerce (1986),is "a townwiththe spiritualflavor and old fashioned valuesofan earlierday";yetin Woodstockone can also "discoverthe pleasures and treasures of today"a place, Sack (1988)would argue,where one can consumegeography. Manya center village ofthenineteenth century, and industrial village as well,hasbecomea cultural a retreat amenity, from the city. Quite literally such placesfailed inthenineteenth to become cities century and were Romantically reconfigured as symbols of an idealizedpast. Nor has the settlement ideal been lost to present-day where it has been masuburbia, nipulated in a succession of historical and aesThe compositelandscapeof theticcontexts. America's enduring affluent suburbs most the nineteenth-century settlecloselyreflects mentidealas suburban vision (Burns 1980).An of excursion aboutcontemporary borderlands is adhundreds of American cities,however, and equate to revealhow overtplace-makers havemanipulated geographical the imagineers Emersonian settlement ideal into both modernist versions of the suband postmodernist urbanvision(see Fig.6). In the lastfewyears a new traditionalism for contemespecially, ofsuburban porary design communities hasselfconsciously harkenedto the villagetradition (Langdon 1988; Leccese 1988). Avant-garde landscapearchitects have broughtthe ninesettlement ideal intosharpfoteenth-century cus once more.TheyproposethatAmericans wish to liveandwork inexclusive, aestheticallymixed-usesettlecontrolled,self-governed, ments,elitistconstructionslike Concord's than rescenter rather themonotonous village, thathavebeen servedup idential subdivisions forthe pasthalf-century. Indeed,fewAmericans have ever achievedwhateven Emerson he could not have (Emfoundto his chagrin erson 1910, 506). When suburbanization was in the industrial democratized era,the settleThe ideal mentideal lostmuchof itspromise. of integrating withcityhad devolved country intoan imperative from to withdraw the city. In gaining a settlement ideal,albeitneither universally accepted nor commonly realized, we havelostanother-a sense of place-seated nevcommunity. Place-seated community may er have been more thana Romanticliterary conceit (Hart1983, 221). True, colonial New a social web, the configuformed Englanders ration ofwhich thesettlement structured space

stance,where the maturing settlement landscape was contemporaneous withthe rise of in New England centervillages itself. Certain enduring geographical habits reflecting the New Englandvillageideal were expressedwidelyoutsidethe westward Yankee migration belt as well. New Englandhas no Otherpartsof the unique claimto originality. U.S. had nucleatedsettlement traditions, and townwas anotherimportant the Pennsylvania geographicalmodel for the Americansmall town (Zelinsky 1977). Commercial blocksapin many peared simultaneously regions of the maincountry, and railroads appreciably altered street form whereand whenthey Likearrived. wise, villages aboutNewYork, Philadelphia, and a hostofothercommercial and industrial cities hadalsoserved as "first suburbs." ButeliteNew in Englanders articulated forotherAmericans wordand deed howto buildtheir ownworlds. New Englanders imbued other places witha inlandcharacteristic village ideology reflected scape compositions of widely-spaced, singlehouses fronting on broad lawnsalong family tree-shadedresidential streets(J.B. Jackson 1972,37).NewEnglanders thesetcontributed tlement inresidential landideal,nowreflected scapes acrossan urbanizedand corporatized America.

Conclusion
RomanticNew Englanders builttheirown cenworlds.Simultaneously theyconstructed tervillages from colonialtownand village landand they inscapes of dispersedsettlement New England of tradition venteda Romantic a geographical villagelife.They manipulated with imageto fuse New England-as-tradition setvillage-as-setting andto createan enduring tlement ideal.Emerson and hiscontemporaries the settlement articulated ideal whileseeking andcity alikeina suburban borderland. country in ConEmerson himself was Transcendental cord and urbanein Bostonbycommuting betweenthe two on the Fitchburg Railroad. The settlement real idealenduresinvillages, acrossthe U.S. Relict centerviland imagined, lages likeLenoxand Litchfield embodyidealized pastsand contrived landscapeelements reflective of a persistent gentried ideologyof Duncan 1973). and elitism(James exclusivity its Chamber Woodstock, Vermont, proclaims

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as Ideal Village New England

47

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Figure 6. Ashburn Village. The Emersoniansettlement ideal endures in suburban NorthernVirginia.Source: Robert L. Simmons,KettlerForline,Inc., reprintedby permission.

of the New Englandtown. NathanielHawthorne, however, causesone to wonderabout the efficacy of such a thingas "villagecomideal is muchwithus, munity." A community bythe village trametaphorically perpetuated butexperience teachesus thatpeople, dition, not places, create communal relationships. not causes,of the Landscapes are reflections, humancondition(Relph 1987,267), a notion and developerswho fabreformers, planners, community incontemricate place to contrive haveyetto discover. subdivisions Comporary hasbecome lessplace-bound thanever munity it mayhave been before,as we increasingly infunctional communicate space and commute increasingly difficult to define in Euclidean ofwherewe livehave terms. Our place-images to our daily livesthan become moreimportant

as simtheplaceswherewe live.Place-images, who ple as zip codes forsome,tellmarketers we are.Theytellus as wellhow muchwe have ideal. builtworldsto achievea settlement we have built?How has Whatof the worlds of Emerson or Olmsted theelitist construction settlement devolved into our contemporary Rubin(1979,360modelforthe urbanfringe? question:How does an op61) asksa similar urbancomcoherentand efficient erationally idiom urban landscape ina modern merceexist The as dysfunctional? characterized popularly ideology is thataesthetic answer, she suggests, corporateideology.Since servesto reinforce vision urban thelossofthenineteenth-century place-making, with city, ofintegrating country like aestheticideology,has falleninto new viideal and suburban hands.The settlement

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48

Wood an elitist sion,likeaesthetic ideology, reflected construction. Todaythe settlement ideal,like aestheticideology,has become the province of those forwhom materialist concernsand preoccupation with symbolic, often historicist, imagesinfluence design.The settlement ideal inmakserves a corporate culture instrumental ingtaste(Rubin1979)and imagineering place (Relph1987).America's subdivision "villagers" a landscapeof corporate inhabit construction modeled on the elitistconstruction of the nineteenth century. A mostvexing How have questionremains. scholars formalized and perpetuated the conwithcultural founding of Romantic tradition landscape?How have scholars contributed to of place imthe invention and manipulation ages? Are scholarsas ingenuousas Romantic New Englanders, building theirown worldsas Ifso, explaining artand artifact? the invention oftradition liesinassessment ofneither objectivenorimpressionistic space. It lies,as Rubin (1979,361)hasnotedaboutaesthetic ideology, interra incognita separating realand ideal, where New Englanders builttheirown worldsand in designing, where Americans, constructing, in suburbs, and living elaborateon others'gein the contemporary ographies landscape. Acknowledgments
A 1988 Peterson at the American AnFellowship Massachusetts tiquarian Societyin Worcester, supof the research here. An portedportions reported version wasreadatthe1989annual abridged meeting I wish of American of the Association Geographers. theAmerican to thank and RobAntiquarian Society SeniorVice President, Kettler Forert L. Simmons, to reproduce I line,Inc.,forpermission illustrations. also wish to thankthe numerouscolleagues and whoat one timeoranother haveshared friends their withme, especially ideas on New England villages Bowdenand PeirceLewis, Martyn and acknowledge on thispaper of severalrethe specific comments viewers, anonymous and otherwise.

References
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1. The twentieth-century literature scholarly perthe tradition of colonialvillageas nupetuating form cleatedform-transposing andorder-is voto reviewor luminous, and I make no attempt assessit here. 2. A phalanstery, ofa Fourieritehere,isthedwelling likecommunity of persons living cooperatively.

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