Brook Farm

Brook Farm, a community on Fourier's principles, 8 miles SW. of Boston, organised in 1840 by George Ripley, and largely an outcome of the Transcendental movement of the time. Here, on an estate of 200 acres, a company of scholars and educated men and women settled down to a communistic experiment, in which every member should do his share of the necessary manual work. The phalanstery, 175 feet long and three stories high, was burned down before it was occupied; and the attempt ended in hopeless failure. Hawthorne was one of the founders, and lived for some months on the farm, in which he invested all his savings; a charming memorial of this singular enterprise is his Blithedale Romance.