Few places in America can match the visionary history and unique charm of New Harmony, Indiana. Nestled on a picturesque bend of the Wabash River in the southwestern corner of Indiana, this is not your typical American small town. Founded in 1814 by religious separatists, it evolved into a social experiment that drew some of the greatest thinkers of the day. Today, New Harmony stands as an exceptional National Historic Landmark District, reflecting 200 years of influence from artists, reformers, scientists, educators, and admirers, and showcasing its global significance as an early American hub of equality. Its global significance is a source of pride and interest for those seeking to understand the history of this unique town offering a one-of-a-kind destination for anyone seeking to rejuvenate their body, mind, and spirit.
This article delves into New Harmony’s remarkable past as a utopian settlement. You’ll discover the key stories, must-see sites like the Roofless Church and labyrinths, and find practical tips for planning your visit to ensure you make the most of your time in this charming historic town of New Harmony, Indiana. 
Church Park - 404 Church Street
The “Door of Promise,” entrance to Church Park. This site once held both the first Harmonist church (1815–1822) and its successor (1822). The second church building, which was standing when the Harmonists sold the town, is regarded as one of the American frontier’s most important early-19th-century structures, and the Door of Promise is a reconstruction of the door to that church. As Church Park’s formal entrance, the Door of Promise centers on a fountain by American sculptor Don Gummer and incorporates the Harmonists’ golden rose emblem, which, alongside the Labyrinth, is a defining symbol of New Harmony. After the Harmonists departed, the church was repurposed by the Owenites for dances, theater, and a library. One version of the story says, when the Pennsylvania Harmonists learned their old church was hosting dances, they dispatched a descendant of the early settlers to buy the building, which was then razed, and its bricks reused to construct the wall that surrounds the Harmonist Cemetery.
Many people drawn to utopian settlements had deep roots in evangelical Protestantism, particularly the fervor of the Second Great Awakening. Revivalist religion, however, left them eager not just for personal salvation but for sweeping social change. The groups they created embraced varieties of socialist thought and were seen as extreme because they aimed to build an entirely new social order rather than patch up the existing one.
Beginning in the 1800s, numerous utopian intentional communities sprang up across the United States. New Harmony just happens to be the site of two of these major communal ventures, one based on religion and the other a social experiment.
Poet's House - 404 Granary Street
Once known as the Franck House (1822), the Poet’s House still stands on its original Harmonist foundation. Jane Blaffer Owen bought the property in 1947 and converted it into a guesthouse for the many artists she hosted. She later arranged for the home to be given to the Robert Lee Blaffer Trust in 1958. Today, the Poet’s House primarily serves as a residence for poets and writers. It currently hosts participants in the New Harmony Project’s Legacy Program and the annual New Harmony Project Conference each May. New Harmony History
The Harmonie Society (1814-1824)
In 1814, a German Lutheran separatist sect known as the Harmonie Society bought 30,000 acres of dense forest along the Wabash River. The group, led by Johann Georg “George” Rapp, had broken with the Lutheran Church in Württemberg in 1795 due to dissatisfaction with its teachings and practices. They migrated to America between 1803 and 1805, and by February of 1805, they had formally organized under the Articles of Agreement, thereby gaining legal standing in the United States.
Their first community, Harmony, Pennsylvania, established in 1804, quickly proved inadequate: the climate was severe, and river access was poor. Rapp sought a location on a river with milder conditions suitable for growing grapes and with enough space for up to 20,000 followers. He found such a site in the Indiana Territory, on the southwestern edge of Indiana. They sold their first town to a Mennonite group, and about 800 members traveled by boat down the Ohio and up the Wabash, landing near the present town of New Harmony’s northern edge, where an advance party had already begun cleared ground and building temporary housing. 
Block Houses - Corner of North and West Streets
Almost all of the Harmonist block houses have disappeared; only a part of the Barrett-Gate House and a section of the kitchen wing from Community House No. 2 (now called the Mother Superior House) remain. The original cabins were taken apart and their timbers reused in later construction. The small blockhouses now on display, relocated from the Spencer farm in Illinois, date from the same era and follow the same design tradition. Raised between 1814 and 1819 by an advance party before the Harmonists left Pennsylvania, these structures served as temporary dwellings for families while they improved their lots or built more substantial homes. Built entirely by hand, each cabin originally had a dirt floor and just a single small window, with the option to add floors, a loft, or more windows over time. These two existing cabins now stand where Harmonist cabins once stood. The Harmonists called their log dwellings “block houses” because they used squared oak or poplar timbers. The gaps between logs were packed with chinking, a mud-clay mixture reinforced with straw, wood chips, and river shells, for insulation. Every household kept a barn for a cow and an outhouse; unlike the houses, barn walls were left unchinked to allow airflow. A paling fence separated the barn and house to keep livestock out of the garden. Because the settlement was entirely wooden, fire posed a constant danger. Homes lacked fireplaces, and cooking was done outdoors. Neighborhoods relied on a shared communal oven for baking bread.
Within a year, they had laid out a tidy, well-planned town, arranged in a square of ten broad, straight streets. The outer streets were sensibly named North, South, East, and West. In contrast, the interior streets took their names from the key buildings that would eventually be built there: Granary, Church, Tavern, Steam Mill, Main, and Brewery. (Ironically, today, all the churches are on Tavern Street and the taverns on Church Street.) The settlement operated a steam-powered facility for carding and spinning wool, used both horse-drawn and hand-driven threshing machines, and maintained a brewery, a distillery, vineyards, and a winery. Sheltered by hills on the south and east and bordered by the sweeping, sycamore-lined Wabash to the north and west, the settlement sat in a lovely valley.
David Lenz House - 324 North Street
The Lenz House represents the Harmonists’ second wave of building in Indiana, dating from 1819–1822. Their approach was methodical: early dwellings were log blockhouses set back from the road so a later, more permanent frame or brick residence could be erected right at the street line. Once the new house went up, the original log structure was dismantled, and its timbers reused. Front doors did not face the street, and the houses were essentially prefabricated at the mill, with numbered pieces indicating how they fit together. David Lenz, a German-born farmer who also trained in law, though he is not known to have served the Society in that capacity, arrived via Harmony, Pennsylvania. By 1807, he and his wife, Christina, had three sons: David, Christian, and Jonathan. Christina died in 1815, so only Lenz and the boys occupied this home. His brothers Daniel, Israel, and Jakob also settled in New Harmony. David Lenz likely died shortly before the Harmonists left Indiana in 1825. Son, Jonathan, would become a Society trustee after moving back to Pennsylvania. In the Owen–Maclure era, John Beal resided in the house briefly before constructing his own home in 1829. A year earlier, in 1828, carpenter Thomas Mumford joined the community, married Louisa Maentel, and purchased the property. Louisa’s father, the artist Jacob Maentel, spent his final years there; his paint supplies were later discovered in the attic. The house eventually passed to the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America through gifts from Mumford’s heirs. In 1958, the organization relocated the building to its current site and carried out a restoration.
They produced cotton, flannel, wool cloth, yarn, knitted goods, tinware, wagons, carts, plows, rope, leather, leather products, flour, beef, pork, and butter. Although they themselves drank wine only in moderation, they operated a brewery, a winery, and a distillery, serving beer, peach brandy, whiskey, and wine to the many visitors frequenting their comfortable tavern.
The Barrett-Gate house stands on the corner on North and Main Streets. It is made from two older buildings that were moved and joined together: an original Harmonist log cabin and, a mid-1800s addition on the right. The log portion, built in 1814, is one of the last surviving examples of the early Rappite log homes once erected in New Harmony.
By 1824, they had erected four large brick dormitories for unmarried members of the Society and about 150 single-family houses. Early dwellings were log structures, which they later replaced with frame and brick buildings. True to their pietistic focus, their most prominent structures were two spacious churches: the first, a white-frame building; the second, a brick one.
Mother Superior House - 505 Granary Street
This 1820 structure, originally the Kilbinger House, melds an original Harmonist block house with a Harmonist brick one. In the Harmonist period, it served as the community kitchen, functioning as an annex to Community House No. 2, and during the Owen/Maclure era, it operated as a tavern. In the 1960s, Jane Blaffer Owen restored the property and added a guesthouse. 
Harmonist Labyrinth - 1239 Main Street
The Harmonist Labyrinth is a series of concentric rings of carefully trimmed privet with a Rappite Temple at the center. This rebuilt Harmonist labyrinth reflects the calm and quiet that the utopians sought. They designed this labyrinth in the early 1800s as a setting for quiet contemplation. To the Rappites, walking its turns was a form of meditation, both a trial and a metaphor for working through life’s difficulties. After the group departed, the site fell into neglect until the mid-1900s. Its original design was altered into a maze in the 1930s, but in 2008, using archival records, it was returned to its original form. Today, the labyrinth occupies a prominent spot on the edge of town on New Harmony’s Main Street. Open year-round, visitors can trace the hedged path to the center, where a stone Rappite temple awaits. If patience runs short, gates provide a shortcut to the central shrine. 
The entrance to the Harmonist Cemetery is where Granary Street meets West Street.
Long before the Harmonists claimed the site as their cemetery, the ground already held meaning: several small Native American mounds from the Middle Woodland Period rise across the area. It is thought they may have been ceremonial rather than burial mounds. When the Harmonists later used the land, it was simply a portion of their orchard, no wall or fence, just a corner of the orchard set aside for burials. The Harmonist did not regard death as tragic, expecting Christ’s imminent return and the resurrection of the dead. True to their belief in equality in both life and death, there are no headstones to mark the graves. It is said that more than 200 members of the Harmonist Society were buried there in the ten years they were in New Harmony, including many who died from malaria. Archaeologists using sonar have identified what they believe to be 40 graves, located in a straight line just to the left of the entrance gate, running through the middle of the cemetery. The brick wall surrounding the cemetery dates to 1874. That year, Jonathan Lenz returned to New Harmony. He bought the deteriorating Harmonist Brick Church back and dismantled it, repurposing its bricks to construct the cemetery’s surrounding wall. Jane Blaffer Owen planted the beautiful trees you see here today.
Consequently, after ten years in Indiana, he led the Society back to Pennsylvania to establish a third settlement near Pittsburgh, which they named Economy, in pursuit of his vision for a larger, more prosperous community.
The town of Harmonie was sold to Robert Owen. 
The Potter’s Barn, circa 1814.
The Owen-Maclure Social Experiment (1825-1827)
A prominent advocate of social change, prosperous mill owner Robert Owen, amassed his wealth at the textile mill works of New Lanark, Scotland. In 1824, he crossed the Atlantic with his 22-year-old son, William, to secure a site in the United States where he could test his blueprint for “a New Moral World,” a society aiming at happiness, enlightenment, and prosperity through education, scientific and technological progress, and cooperative living.
Owen envisioned a planned community that would provide an enhanced social, intellectual, and physical environment consistent with his reform principles. Eager to prove his theories workable and to remedy problems he saw in New Lanark, he sought a ready-made town. The settlement of Harmonie, Indiana, fit the bill. He completed the purchase in January 1825, paying $175,000 for the village, and renamed it the New Harmony Community of Equality. Owen didn't spent much time in the town, he was busy gathering people to live there. On a recruitment trip, Owen met the Pestalozzian educator Marie Louis Duclos Fretageot, who, in turn, persuaded distinguished geologist William Maclure, a leading figure in Philadelphia’s Academy of Natural Sciences, to join. Maclure later became Owen’s financial partner, drawing to New Harmony a circle of notable scientists and educators, including Thomas Say, Josef Neef, and Charles-Alexandre Lesueur. They and others arrived aboard the keel boat Philanthropist, popularly nicknamed the “Boatload of Knowledge,” to support Owen’s new socialist venture. Together, they transformed New Harmony into an intellectual hub with statewide and national influence on public, elementary, and vocational education. 
The historic Rapp–Maclure–Owen Home stands at the corner of Main and Church streets in downtown New Harmony. A high brick privacy wall now encircles the property, essentially concealing it from view.
Originally the location of Father Rapp’s home, the grand mansion, was roughly the size of Dormitory No. 2, measuring 60 feet long; it was four stories tall with a 20-foot-long, one-story kitchen attached to the northwest corner. Each level featured two long east–west corridors. A visitor in 1818 described it as “a handsome brick building where Rapp held a concert once a week.” When the town of Harmonie was sold in 1825, William Maclure moved into the home, along with his two brothers and two sisters. But by the following year, the home was being used as one of Maclure’s schools, operated by Madame Marie Duclos Fretageot, who had brought her students from Philadelphia to study there. In 1831, the scientist Thomas Say and his artist wife, Lucy Sistaire Say, made it their home. In 1844, a major fire destroyed much of the town, including the Rapp-Maclure home, leaving only fragments of its stone cellar and foundation. Maclure’s brother, Alexander, rebuilt the structure as a single-story home in the Greek Revival style before bequeathing it to Lucy Sistaire Say in 1850. She later sold it to David Dale Owen. The house then passed to a New Harmony mill owner in 1901, before it returned to the Owen family in 1948, when Kenneth Dale Owen, great-great-grandson of Richard Dale Owen, purchased it. The home was restored in 1990.
The town’s intellectual legacy drew notable visitors during the Owen period, including the naturalist Prince Alexander Philipp Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied; the Swiss artist Karl Bodmer; and Frances Wright, a feminist and protégé of General Lafayette. Many creative figures lived and worked there for a time. From these origins, New Harmony continued to foster experimentation and fresh ideas through the Victorian era and into the modern day.
Owen’s egalitarian communal venture lasted only two years, although the school remained active. The venture primarily faltered because there just weren’t enough workers for the mills or to do essential trades like leather working and saddlery. Almost from day one, disputes erupted over governance, labor arrangements, and the absence of religious institutions. Owen returned to Britain in 1827, and failing health sent Maclure to Mexico in search of a more congenial climate, but many remained. 
Thralls Opera House - 612 Church Street
The historic Thralls Opera House was built by the Harmonists in 1824 as Rooming House 4, this building housed unmarried men and was the last dormitory they constructed. At that time, it is believed the ground floor was a common living area, and the upper floor had 16 rooms. During the Owen/Maclure era, it changed little; one account says 16 families lived in those 16 rooms. After the communal period, the building served many uses: a private home, a school, a store, a warehouse, and a Sunday school. In 1859, the Dramatic Association bought and remodeled it, renaming it Union Hall. They used it as a theater and ballroom. From the 1860s to the 1890s, the Dramatic Association Thespian Society, the Golden family, and touring companies performed there. It also hosted balls, parties, concerts, and other events. Eugene Thrall, a part-owner since 1867, became the sole owner in 1888 and made more changes. Renaming it Thrall’s Opera House, he added a new facade, arched the windows and doors, installed cherry paneling in the main room and balcony, and curved the balcony. It welcomed traveling and local troupes until 1910, when it was mostly used for community events such as school graduations. From 1911 to 1913, it operated as a nickelodeon. In 1914, Ed Garret bought the property for a Conoco service station and garage. He painted the exterior white and added double-car garage doors to the front. During that time, the orchestra pit was used for changing oil. In 1964, Harmonie Associates, a local preservation group, persuaded the Indiana Department of Natural Resources to buy the building as a state historic site. Restoration to return it to a theater finished in 1968. Since then, it has hosted meetings, workshops, lectures, music programs, and balls. Post-Communal Period 1828-1860
Although the Owen–Maclure partnership ended, a vibrant community remained. Between 1830 and 1860, New Harmony emerged as a key American hub for geological surveying, training, and research. Owen's five grown children, Jane Owen Fauntleroy, Robert Dale, David Dale, Richard, and William, remained in New Harmony and left an imprint that extended across Indiana. Many members of Maclure's scientific circle, among them Charles Alexandre Lesueur and Thomas Say, remained in New Harmony, and their presence attracted notable visitors from across the United States and from abroad.
1830 Owen House - 531 Tavern Street
Commissioned by Robert Dale Owen and David Dale Owen to be a brick Federal-style rental property, it never housed any members of the Owen family. Over ten different families occupied it between 1830 and 1838. Historic New Harmony restored the building in the 1970s.
Robert Dale Owen represented Indiana in Congress and was instrumental in shaping the 1845 act that created the Smithsonian Institution. Collaborating with architect James Renwick Jr., designer of the Smithsonian "Castle," he served as a regent and chaired the Building Committee. He also wrote Hints on Public Architecture, asserting that Norman Romanesque more commonly called Romanesque Revival, today, was the proper style for American civic buildings, using the Smithsonian as the prime illustration.
Rapp Owen Granary - 413 Granary Street
Sometime before 1819, the Harmonists erected this five-story stone-and-brick granary, capped with a German-style, tile-clad hipped roof, to store grain for the entire settlement. This large building, measuring roughly 40 by 70 feet, provided 4½ stories of usable space and embodied German timber-framing methods for granaries, with closely spaced floors designed to bear the weight of heavy grain sacks and other farm goods. In the Owen/Maclure era, William Maclure, often called the father of American geology, appropriated the building for his own use and that of fellow naturalists, employing it to store and display scientific specimens. When the Owen/Maclure communal venture ended, ownership of the granary passed to Maclure. Dr. David Dale Owen, who had initially trained as a physician but was drawn to geology, eventually changing careers, purchased the property from Maclure’s estate, and from 1843 to 1859, used the granary as his third laboratory. While serving as Indiana’s State Geologist, Owen made the granary a hub of American geology. He transformed the structure for geological work, removing every other floor to gain vertical clearance, and installed large Georgian-style windows to flood the interior with light. During that time, the ample rooms served as a lecture hall, library, and museum, and were used to organize, store, and exhibit collections, to teach, and to conduct research, helping to train enthusiasts in the new discipline of geology. Later, the building housed a woolen mill, a flour mill, and a pork-packing plant before an 1878 fire destroyed the top two stories and gutted the interior. By 1948, the property was back in the Owen family's hands when Kenneth Dale Owen, himself a geologist, bought it. In 1992, the Rapp-Granary-Owen Foundation was formed to support a major rehabilitation/restoration of the building. Hafer and Associates of Evansville, chosen for their expertise in historic preservation, completed an adaptive reuse plan from 1997 to 1999. Treating the building as a community center while honoring its key historical phases, the north facade and first-floor interior recall the original Harmonist granary, with five levels, small window openings, and the preserved vertical ventilation shafts. The second-floor interior and the side and rear elevations highlight the David Dale Owen laboratory period with expansive Georgian-style windows. Today, it is used as a wedding venue.
David Dale Owen was named Indiana's first state geologist in 1837. He was appointed as the United States Geologist in 1839, where he led federal surveys while simultaneously serving as state geologist for several states. He counseled Renwick to select red-brown Seneca Creek sandstone for the Smithsonian Castle's facade, praising its geological advantages.
Richard Dale Owen briefly served as Purdue University's first president before returning to Bloomington to teach science at Indiana University. IU's Owen Hall is named for him. He later followed David as Indiana's second state geologist. Charles Alexandre Lesueur, apart from a few excursions, especially along the river route linking New Harmony with New Orleans, continued to live in New Harmony until 1837, when he returned to France. In 1845, he was appointed curator of the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle du Havre, an institution created to preserve his extensive collection of drawings and paintings of his explorations of Australia and the United States. 
Thomas Say's Grave.
An obelisk stands in the side garden of the Rapp Maclure Mansion to mark Thomas Say’s final resting place. Although the house is privately owned, you can see the monument through the fence from the sidewalk at the corner of Main and Granary Streets. After the collapse of Owen’s social experiment, Thomas Say stayed in New Harmony. He continued his entomological work, became a civic leader, and eventually moved into the large residence previously used by Rapp and then by Maclure. He died there on October 10, 1834. While his first burial site remains unknown, in 1846, his remains were reinterred in a brick vault behind the Rapp–Maclure Mansion. Sometime in the late 1840s or early 1850s, the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia erected the obelisk that marks his grave today.
A close-up of Thomas Say’s original tablet-style tombstone, discovered at the Slater Printing Office and used as a typesetting workbench.
In 1858, Harry T. Slater launched a weekly newspaper in New Harmony, Indiana, called the Advertiser. After serving in the Civil War, he returned in 1867, reopened his shop on the second floor of the Harmonist Dormitory No. 2, and began issuing the New Harmony Register from that space. Sometime between 1867 and 1875, the operation moved upstairs to a larger, more convenient room on the third floor, where the press still stands today. Harry’s son, Charles, kept the weekly in print until age finally compelled his retirement, and the plant shut down in 1932. After 65 years in business, Slater handed the office key to the building’s owner, Miss Mary E. Fauntleroy, asking only that the press be left in its longtime room. It is said that Henry Ford tried to purchase the printing press when he was collecting important pieces of American History for Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan, but Miss Fauntleroy stood firm and the press remained. At the center of the pressroom stands a massive worktable topped with stone, fashioned from an old tablet-style headstone measuring 39 by 78 inches. The Slaters flipped it upside down so the smoothed back was face upward and used it for setting type; whatever words once appeared on it had long been forgotten. The stone likely became available when a body was reinterred, and the Slaters had been using it ever since. Imagine the surprise when it was realized that the “worktable” was in fact Thomas Say’s gravestone. A relatively recent discovery, whose exact timing is unclear, although it was reported in a 1989 article. Thomas Say, the renowned naturalist known as the Father of American Entomology, died of typhoid fever on October 10, 1834, and was buried in New Harmony. He had come to the settlement in 1823 aboard the “Boatload of Knowledge” to join Robert Owen’s utopian experiment. After the experiment collapsed, Say remained in New Harmony and was living in the Rapp-Maclure Mansion at the time of his death. Say’s first burial place is unknown, but in 1846, his remains were moved to a brick underground vault behind the Rapp-Maclure Mansion at Main and Granary Streets. In the late 1840s or early 1850s, the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia placed an obelisk over his grave. Today, Thomas Say’s original gravestone remains the worktable in the Slater’s printing plant, but the inscription has been flipped upright for all to see.
Maclure remained an ardent advocate of Pestalozzian "learning by doing," corresponding regularly with Madame Marie Duclos Fretageot, to whom he entrusted the schools, along with educators Joseph Neef, Eloise Buss Neef, and Guillaume (William) Phiquepal d'Arusmont. Convinced that ordinary people could better society through self-education, he established the Working Men's Institute in New Harmony in 1838. After he died in 1840, his estate financed 160 additional Working Men's Institutes, 143 in Indiana and 16 in Illinois. Today, only the New Harmony Institute survives.
Working Men's Institute - 407 Tavern Street
New Harmony’s Working Men’s Institute traces its origins to Robert Owen’s early-1820s social experiment in the town. Owen held that women and men are fundamentally rational and, with proper education and encouragement, could build a durable, harmonious society. His vision drew scores of idealists, among them the geologist William Maclure, one of the movement’s boldest figures. Maclure, Owen’s business partner, championed self-education for working people as the engine of social improvement. Disenchanted with his own schooling and with conventional academics, which he felt served a privileged few and offered little practical value, he argued that laborers should be able to teach themselves useful arts and sciences without gatekeepers. He promoted public institutions that would spread applied knowledge to manual workers so they could, through their own effort, escape ignorance, dependence, and fear. In 1838, Maclure founded the Working Men’s Institute in New Harmony. The idea spread quickly: 143 more WMIs opened across Indiana and another 16 in Illinois. New Harmony’s institute was the pioneer, and it is now the last survivor. After Maclure’s estate was settled, funds were made available to create WMI libraries for workers, though not to construct buildings. Grateful for Maclure’s model, Dr. Edward and Sophia Murphy financed a dedicated home for the institute. The current structure, completed in 1894, is an example of the Richardsonian Romanesque Revival style. Today, the WMI functions as a library, museum, archive, and art gallery. Its museum features geological and natural history collections, artifacts from the Harmonist era, the 1804 “Pat Lyon” fire engine brought from Philadelphia, and an 1825 Harmonist wagon. The gallery includes old master reproductions gifted by the Murphy's alongside later acquisitions.
By 1860, most scientists and educators had either died or departed New Harmony, and the Civil War dampened much of the remaining scientific and scholarly activity.
Post Civil War and Beyond 1860-1945
The 500 block of Main Street. Two buildings that stand out on the block are the New Harmony Banking Company Building and Mumford Emporium, right next door, both dating to 1882.
The old Wilson's Furniture Store building at the intersection of Main and Church Streets is now home to Casa Armonia Mexican Restaurant and Sara's Wine & Bier Bar.
If you like to sample unique beers, Harmonie Bier is a Schwarzbier dark lager crafted from the Harmonist 1816 recipe. It is recognized as Indiana’s first commercially produced beer and is available only at Sara’s Wine & Bier Bar. It offers a deep, malt-forward taste that captures the area’s history and is quite good.
Buildings were built in wood and brick, with some examples featuring stone, cast iron, and pressed tin fronts, each contributing to the town's distinct architectural character. Earlier Harmonist structures continued in commercial use, although altered to fit new needs. However, New Harmony’s prosperity and its architecture endured many major upheavals: the 1908 Monitor Corner fire, the 1913 Wabash River flood, World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II.
Murphy Auditorium - 419 Tavern Street
The historic Murphy Auditorium was commissioned to mark New Harmony’s 1914 centennial. It was built on a site the Working Men’s Institute acquired in 1911 next to its museum and library, the former location of Harmonist School No. 11. That schoolhouse was demolished in 1913 to clear the way for the new hall. Built in a late Neoclassical style and financed by the Dr. Edward Murphy Working Men’s Institute fund, the facility is now operated by the University of Southern Indiana and hosts conferences, concerts, lectures, and theatrical productions. Edward Murphy, orphaned early in life, emigrated from Ireland to the United States with a relative. Not quite thirteen, he ran away to New Harmony in 1826 during the Owen–Maclure experiment and enrolled in the School of Industry, which offered workers solid schooling and apprenticeships in the trades. In his thirties, he earned a medical degree from the University of Louisville, practiced medicine, and taught. He and his wife lost all six of their children in childhood, and ultimately dedicated their fortune to the Working Men’s Institute. Kenneth Dale Owen & Jane Blaffer Owen 1941-2010
Many of the locals would argue that the KD and Jane Blaffer Owen era could be considered a third utopia...
Kenneth Dale “KD” Owen, Robert Owen’s great-great-grandson, grew up in New Harmony and remained active there throughout his life. He built a prosperous career in geology and amassed significant means. A pivotal moment occurred in 1941, when he married Jane Blaffer Owen (1915-2010), heiress to Humble Oil, the precursor to Exxon and Mobil. Jane was captivated by the town’s layered history from the Harmonists to the Owen/Maclure era, and KD’s family connection to it.
Roofless Church - 420 North Street
The Roofless Church in New Harmony, Indiana, is an open-air, interdenominational sanctuary conceived by American architect Philip Johnson, whose work is widely considered among the architectural masterpieces of the 20th century. The church was commissioned in 1957 by Jane Blaffer Owen and dedicated three years later, in 1960. Today, it is a popular location for destination weddings. Encircling the site are 12-foot walls, with a ceremonial eastern entrance marked by dramatic gilded gates. 
At the heart of the complex stands a shingled canopy shaped like an inverted rosebud, which shelters an important Cubist bronze.
The Descent of the Holy Spirit by Jewish sculptor Jacques Lipchitz.
In it, the Virgin Mary descends to earth through a star-speckled cloud, guided by a dove symbolizing the Holy Spirit. Lipchitz intended the piece as a statement of spiritual unity, highlighting the Spirit’s power to draw humanity together, a vision that echoes the biblical Pentecost, when tongues of fire descended upon the Apostles. The example at the Roofless Church is one of three identical versions Lipchitz made; another notably resides in the cloister of Iona Abbey in Scotland. Lipchitz also created the gilded entry gates.
They returned to New Harmony with plans to restore the Owen family legacy. KD served on bodies such as the New Harmony Memorial Commission II and the Historic New Harmony Foundation. Jane, recognizing that New Harmony needed patrons to protect its heritage, channeled their wealth and influence, along with those of fellow donors, into rehabilitating historic structures. She first focused on saving the Harmonist buildings. They reacquired properties that became Indian Mound Farm, and then broadened her preservation vision to include commissioning contemporary art and architecture in the town.
Cathedral Labyrinth and Sacred Garden - 301 North Street
This labyrinth takes its inspiration from the famed 12th-century design at Chartres Cathedral in France, once walked by Christians as a symbolic pilgrimage. In New Harmony’s Harmonist Era (1814–1824), residents used their own labyrinth as a place to unwind after a day’s labor. Today’s Cathedral Labyrinth revives that spirit, marrying heritage and modernity in a contemporary interpretation of the Harmonists’ design. Nature is structured by pattern and order, and people instinctively seek coherence amid disorder. The labyrinth offers that ordered space: a single, honest path without tricks, forks, or dead ends. Its deeper purpose is introspection, walking inward to the center and then back to your starting point becomes a meditative journey. The garden’s layout draws on the sacred geometry of Chartres. Its axis aligns with the Harmonist cemetery wall and with late 9th-century Woodland Culture Native American burial mounds. Built as a near-exact duplicate of the Chartres pattern, the labyrinth measures 42 feet in diameter and is accurate to within one hundredth of an inch. At the heart lie six “realms,” arranged clockwise from the entrance: Mineral, Plant, Animal, Human, Angelic, and the Unknown.
To sustain this work, Jane Blaffer Owen founded the Robert Lee Blaffer Trust in 1958 and later the Foundation in 2001. Acting both personally and through the Robert Lee Blaffer Foundation, she reshaped New Harmony’s architectural landscape by sponsoring gardens, public art, and new buildings. She commissioned Philip Johnson to design the Roofless Church in 1960, Evans Woollen III created the New Harmony Inn in 1974 and later the Conference Center expansion in 1986, and Richard Meier's Atheneum in 1979.
Carol Owen Coleman Memorial Garden - North Street across from the Roofless. Church
Part of the Jane Blaffer Owen Sanctuary, Carol’s Garden was dedicated in 1982 in memory of Jane’s daughter, Carol Owen Coleman (1944–1979). This tranquil space honors Carol’s brief yet influential life, offering a haven of comfort and inspiration to all who enter. Celebrated for its blend of art and nature, fountains, sculptures, and imaginative dwellings, the garden invites quiet contemplation amid abundant greenery and carefully composed landscapes. 
The Fountain of Life
At the heart of the garden, beneath a graceful canopy of pear trees, stands the Fountain of Life. The fountain and its pair of benches, crafted from Indiana limestone by David Rogers of Bloomington, were designed to enhance the garden’s peaceful character.
Though the couple lived in New Harmony only part of each year, their influence was profound, and they received numerous honors. In 2008, the National Trust for Historic Preservation awarded Jane Blaffer Owen its highest honor, the Louis du Pont Crowninshield Award, in recognition of her sixty years of devotion to New Harmony’s preservation.
Today, the Jane Blaffer Owen Sanctuary embodies her sixty years of commitment to New Harmony. Rooted in her belief in nature’s healing force, her efforts elevated a secular place into a sacred landscape. The Sanctuary holds eight restored structures along with numerous features she imagined: four fountains as well as additional water elements, eleven gardens, and ten outdoor sculptures. 
Tucked within New Harmony historic core, just beyond the New Harmony Inn Resort and Conference Center and the Red Geranium Restaurant, lies the Paul Tillich Park and Swan Lake. Envisioned by Jane Blaffer Owen as a haven for reflection, the landscape blends artwork with a looping footpath around the water.
The park takes its name from Paul Johannes Tillich, a German-born, Christian existentialist thinker, religious socialist, and Lutheran theologian, widely regarded as one of the twentieth century’s most influential theologians. He held posts at universities in Germany until emigrating to the United States in 1933, after which he taught at Union Theological Seminary, Harvard University, and the University of Chicago. Jane Blaffer Owens, educated in several private schools, went on to study with Tillich at Union Theological Seminary in New York. When Tillich died in 1965, his ashes were placed in Paul Tillich Park, set among quiet spruce trees with inscribed stones and a bronze bust, which together mark his final resting place. Visitors wander the path, watch for birds, and linger on benches along the shore; weddings occasionally unfold here. Morning brings a veil of mist and drifting waterfowl, while evening bathes the pond in soft, amber light. In spring, flowering trees fringe the shoreline, and birds tuck nests into the reeds. By fall, the trees flare into scarlet and gold, their colors mirrored in the still lake. A brief stroll from town landmarks, the Roofless Church, its labyrinths, and other installations, the lake’s quiet presence echoes New Harmony’s utopian vision and meditative gardens. 
Chapel of the Little Portion
Set on the north shore of Swan Lake in the Paul Tillich Park, this tiny chapel was designed in 1989 by Stephen de Staebler and built by the Franciscan Brothers of Mount Saint Francis. According to Franciscan friar Reverend David Lenz, the chapel’s name makes this site spiritually significant to his order. St. Francis of Assisi, praying amid the ruins of San Damiano, heard the call, “Francis, go and repair my church.” Believing it meant to restore the structure itself, he rebuilt that church and many others. The church that was especially dear to him was the Portiuncula, “little portion.”
In this charming Southern Indiana community, the idea of utopia still thrives. New Harmony buzzes with energy, featuring distinctive restaurants, boutique shops, antique finds, festivals, the arts, outdoor beauty, and a rich historical legacy.
Visiting New Harmony
Atheneum Visitor Center - 401 N. Arthur Street
Completed in 1979, beside the Wabash River, the Atheneum immediately stood out. Its white porcelain panels and expanses of glass are mounted on a steel framework, and the project marked the first major commission for Richard Meier, who would go on to international renown as a modernist architect.
The building earned a Progressive Architecture Award the year it opened, received the American Institute of Architects Honor Award in 1982, and later the AIA’s Twenty-five Year Award, which praised it as “a wonderfully pure example of the recurring themes among Meier’s substantial oeuvre; it is a classic Meier design.” Meier’s original drawings and the building’s study model now reside in the permanent architecture collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Conceived as a gateway for visitors, the Atheneum channels people along an intentional path that threads through the interior, using layered grids to frame frequent views of the town and the surrounding landscape.
Your first stop should be Historic New Harmony's Atheneum Visitors Center. Here, you can pick up a New Harmony Visitor's Map and the Jane Blaffer Owens Sanctuary Guide with all the must see locations listed.
Historic New Harmony offers a couple of tram tours, the shorter Guided Tram Tour twice daily and a more extended New Harmony History Tour, once a day. Check the links for days, times and prices, I highly recommend the History Tour since it gets you into several of the historic buildings like the Lenz Home that you could not tour otherwise. New Harmony is very walkable, and the Visitors Center is the perfect place to leave your car. If you are not able to walk long distances, golf cart rentals are available at the Visitors Center through the New Harmony Golf Car Company. While four person carts are available on a walk up bases, six person carts must be reserved in advance. Community House No. 2 - 402 N. Main St.
Completed in 1822, Community House No. 2 was the largest of the four Harmonist dormitories in New Harmony. It retains much of its original appearance from the period when it accommodated unmarried members after George Rapp steered the group toward celibacy. Between 40 and 60 Harmonists, men and women, lived there, with shared spaces on the ground floor and sleeping quarters above. Just to the north stands a Harmonist brick home, Kilbinger House, which served as the Community House's summer kitchen annex. An original 1814 Harmonist Block House is attached to the brick house.
During the Owen–Maclure period, the building was converted into a school and became the hub of William Maclure’s Pestalozzian “learning by doing” initiatives. Instruction was coeducational and spanned from infant classes to apprenticeships in the School of Industry. The School of Printing, led by Cornelius Tiebout, issued the Disseminator of Useful Knowledge intermittently from 1828 to 1841. It also produced volumes by scientists and naturalists, by William Maclure, Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, and Thomas Say, and illustrations by Lucy Sistare Say. A graduate of the School of Printing, James Bennett, trained Charles W. Slater, who went on to publish two newspapers from Community House No. 2: the New Harmony Advertiser (1858–1861) and, with his son Harry, the New Harmony Register (1867–1932). The print shop still occupies the upper story. The Kilbringer House during that time operated as a tavern.
Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites operates out of Community House No. 2. The historic Community House is open for self guided tours daily Wednesday through Sunday.
The New Harmony State Historic Site Guided Walking Tour is offered three times daily, leaving from the Community Center, it takes you through Community House #2, Thrall’s Opera House, the Rapp-Owen Granary, the Fauntleroy House, and visits the Harmonist cemetery. Tickets can be purchased in the Gift Shop at the Community House or online. This is another tour that I highly recommend! 
The abandoned Harmony Way Toll Bridge as seen from the Jane B. Owen Overlook. From the Antheneum Visitors Center main entrance, follow the sidewalk down the stairs toward the Wabash River to the overlook.
Originally constructed in 1930 and commonly called the Harmony Way Bridge, the New Harmony Toll Bridge was the first highway to span the lower Wabash River. The now-closed four-span bridge connected Illinois Route 14 in White County to Indiana State Road 66/Church Street at New Harmony, Indiana. The bridge was a big deal in its day, with roughly 10,000 people attending the dedication when it opened. Approximately 900 vehicles used the bridge daily before its closure. The bridge was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2007, recognized in part for its ties to historic New Harmony, Indiana, and for its age.
For more New Harmony travel information:
For more Indiana destination ideas, check out my post:
If you found New Harmony's Utopian Society interesting, you might also enjoy learning about Iowa's Amana Colonies.
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