Architecture Commons^™

The Architecture Of Control: Shaker Dwelling Houses And The Reform Movement In Early-Nineteenth-Century America, Julie Nicoletta

SIAS Faculty Publications

By comparing the development of Shaker dwelling houses with the Quaker-led reform of prisons and insane asylums during the Second Great Awakening, this article places Shaker architecture into a larger context of reform in early-nineteenth-century America. In it, I demonstrate how and why the Shakers incorporated ideas from the outside world and applied them to their own buildings as a means to shape and control behavior. An examination of specific structures and contemporary discourses on reform architecture reveals similarities between Shaker buildings and those of mainstream society. In all its villages, the sect reproduced architectural forms largely developed by Shaker …