Stillness & light: the silent eloquence of Shaker architecture 9780253353627, 0253353629

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Art & Architecture

“This is a book that you will want to have open and in sight, turning its pages from time to time, absorbing the meditation its photographs evoke. . . . The photographs are masterful; their vantage, profound. Plummer’s work not only records stillness and light, it gives them.”

Plummer

how natural light SuffuSeS Shaker deSign

—Donlyn Lyndon, Eva Li Professor of Architecture, University of California, Berkeley

StillneSS & light

“[Plummer’s] images of Shaker spaces . . . are . . . infused with a sense of reality and epiphany.” —Juhani Pallasmaa,

henry Plummer is

Ruth and Norman Moore Visiting Professor of Architecture, Washington University, St. Louis

Professor of Architecture at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, where he is also

“When an architect discovers that LIGHT is the main subject of architecture, he begins to be a real one. How could a real architect not know about LIGHT? How could a good photographer not control LIGHT? How could a good professor not speak about LIGHT? Henry Plummer—a real architect, a splendid photographer, and a wonderful professor—does all of these things for us in Stillness and Light.”

an associate of the Center for Advanced Study. Among his books are Poetics of Light, Light in Japanese Architecture, and The Architecture of Natural Light.

—Alberto Campo Baeza, Architect and Visiting Faculty, University of Pennsylvania School of Design

StillneSS & light The Silent Eloquence of Shaker Architecture

$39.95

S

haker buildings have long been admired for their

simplicity of design and sturdy craftsmanship, with form always following function. Over the years, their distinctive physical characteristics have invited as much study as imitation. Their clean, unadorned lines have been said to reflect core Shaker beliefs such as honesty, integrity, purity, and perfection. In this book, Henry Plummer focuses on the use of natural light in Shaker architecture, noting that Shaker builders manipulated light not only for practical reasons of illumination but also to sculpt a deliberately spiritual, visual presence within their space. Stillness and Light celebrates this subtly beautiful aspect of Shaker innovation and construction, captured in more than a hundred

University Press

Bloomington & Indianapolis www.iupress.indiana.edu 1-800-842-6796

Printed in China

INDIANA

stunning photographs.

indiana

Henry Plummer

StillneSS

&

light

StillneSS light

&

The Silent Eloquence of Shaker Architecture

Henry Plummer

IndIana UnIversIty Press

BloomIngton

•

IndIanaPolIs

This book is a publication of Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, IN 47404-3797 USA http://iupress.indiana.edu Telephone orders 800-842-6796 Fax orders 812-855-7931 Orders by e-mail [email protected] © 2009 by Henry Plummer All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Manufactured in China Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Plummer, Henry, [date] Stillness and light : the silent eloquence of Shaker architecture / Henry Plummer. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-253-35362-7 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Shaker architecture. 2. Light in architecture. I. Title. NA710.P59 2009 720.88’2898—dc22 2008051743 1

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To the memory of

Minor White Teacher and Friend

& For Patty W h o m a k e s i t p o s s ib l e t o d r e a m

God is a Fountain of perfect light. —Mother Ann Lee The light which is established in the heavens or invisible world, is closely connected with the light which is established on earth; and they who walk in the light which is manifest on earth, are compassed about by those who walk in the same light, although in the invisible world. —Shaker medium Paulina Bates, 1849

Contents

intrOductiOn

Shaker Light•Building a State of Grace 1

Preface xi Acknowledgments

Bibliography xiii

1 Simplicity •priStine light 12 14 16 20 24 28

133

monotone mass pure white cavity framed whiteness between wood & plaster wooden cavern

2 Order •FOcuSed light 32 36 38 40 42 43 44

mesmerizing window incantation concentric tonalities double helix twin skylights flying staircase tiered skylights

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3 luminOSity •inner light 50 52 54 56 58 60 64 66 70 74

maximum fenestration interior shutters white kentucky limestone white-painted stonework white on white yellow light lustrous wood clasped light attic dormer cupola

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4 equality •Shared light 76 78 80 84 86 90

transom window interior window double window enfilade of openings lattice of light

5 time •cyclic light 94 96 98 100 104 108 114 116 120 124

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shadow play on limestone spectral colors tree shadows splashes of sun coexisting time states golden cast revolving light & color crossfire of sun I crossfire of sun II light orchestration

Preface T

o try to come to grips with a subject as elusive yet marvelous as the treatment of daylight in Shaker architecture, I have drawn upon two complementary media—writing and photography. Words examine ideas and thoughts, observations and analyses, about Shaker light, while images present the phenomena themselves, as personally encountered on repeated visits to Shaker sites. It is with this in mind that the photographs in this book are intended not as textual illustrations, but rather to form their own mode of inquiry, one that tries to carefully examine a metaphysical aspect of architecture whose significance lies, to a large extent, beyond the domain of words. Of course it has been impossible to photograph Shaker architecture as a living culture, for the inhabitants have died out in all but

one remaining, yet extraordinary village at Sabbathday Lake, Maine. Nevertheless, the Shakers still speak through the spaces they made, and through the light that continues to grace their buildings. The restored Shaker villages surviving today no longer represent precisely how spaces appeared when their communities were active, but, as my subject is neither the material culture nor daily lives of Shakers, these exquisite shells—still possessing that “indescribable air of purity” and “shining with the brilliancy of reflected light” that were observed in them two centuries ago—offer ideal settings in which to explore the quality and play of natural light as it alters the look of Shaker space.

Acknowledgments F

rom the outset I would like to thank Linda Oblack, editor at Indiana University Press, who responded to my initial inquiry with great enthusiasm and support, and has continued to provide enormous help in the conception and development of this book. My thanks also to Miki Bird for her careful editing of the text, and to Pamela Rude for a book design wonderfully attuned to the subject matter. For their gracious assistance in making this book possible, especially the prolonged photography that was undertaken over various seasons during the past twenty years, but concentrated primarily between 2004 and 2008, I would like to thank: Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill (Kentucky), Shakertown at South Union (Kentucky), Shaker Heritage Society at Watervliet (New York), the Darrow School (formerly Mt. Lebanon Shaker Village, New York), Hancock Shaker Village (Massachusetts), Canterbury Shaker Village (New Hampshire), Enfield Shaker Museum (New Hampshire), and the United Shaker Society at Sabbathday Lake (Maine). For their personal assistance, and at times consultation or accompaniment, on numerous visits, I want to thank: Larrie Curry, Philip McIntosh, and Georgie Riddell at Pleasant Hill; Tommy Hines at South Union; Starlyn D’Angelo at Watervliet; Christian Goodwillie and Laura Wolf at Hancock; Nancy Wolf at the Darrow School; Funi Burdick, Tom Johnson, and Elizabeth Pappas at

Canterbury; Arthur Gagnon at Enfield; and Sister Francis, Brother Arnold, and Leonard Brooks at Sabbathday Lake. Several individuals were indispensable in making it possible to witness the magic of Shaker light at twilit hours—Leonard Brooks, Christian Goodwillie, and Philip McIntosh—who cheerfully opened buildings up at the extreme hours of dawn and dusk, often in the dark, and patiently sat through hours of photography in dim light. Several research awards contributed immeasurably to this project, including grants from the Campus Research Board, and the College of Fine and Applied Arts, at the University of Illinois. For these, I would like to thank David Chasco, Director of the School of Architecture, and Robert Graves, Dean of the College of Fine and Applied Arts. For his gift of photography, and insight into the human spirit, I owe a lifelong debt of gratitude to Minor White, from whom I first learned to see myself as well as another, more evocative reality through the lens of a camera. Above all I thank my wife, Patty, companion and partner on all my journeys to Shaker sites, from Kentucky to Maine, who filled these travels with love and good spirits, and willingly shared her always remarkable insights and perceptions—without her this book would never have been.

StillneSS

&

light

Introduction

Shaker Light• Building a State of Gr ace

The magnificent craftsmanship of the Shakers, who for two centu-

that meet our rational eyes today—superbly crafted boxes and chairs,

ries were America’s most successful utopian society, gave visible form

walls and cabinets, floors and stairs—belie a far deeper purpose, and

to a firm belief that usefulness and holiness are one and the same.

spiritual intent, which has nothing to do with material aesthetics or

There was no separation between practical and sacred values in this

adoration. Modeling their ways after Christ, Shakers were engaged,

evangelical sect, which reached its height in 1840 with nearly six

rather, in a constant attempt to cast off possessions and become free

thousand members in eighteen communities, set in rural and isolated

of objects, stripping away the artificial wrappings of worldly culture,

locations from Maine to Kentucky. Perhaps the purest expression of

in order to get back to an ultimate state of being.

1

2

their unique way of living, in which down-to-earth common sense is

Shaker efforts to spiritualize matter, and consequently their atti-

permeated with rigorous faith, is the exquisite functional beauty of

tudes toward light, were strongly influenced by millennialist beliefs.

their architecture. A twofold striving for perfection, epitomized in

Calling themselves the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second

the Shaker maxim, “put your hands to work and your hearts to God,”

Appearing, they were convinced that Christ had come again, initially

was manifested in everything they built—from a door to a window,

in the person of founder Ann Lee, and later in all those within whom

a stair to a railing, a wall to a roof. Underlying this double vision was

the “Christ Spirit awakens.”5 Since the millennium had already ar-

a desire to live in two different worlds—spiritual and natural—at the

rived, Shakers felt impelled to consecrate everything they touched

same time, and with equal intensity, for as Shakers believed, “heaven

and shaped by their labors, with the ultimate aim of establishing “a

and earth are threads of one loom.”2

heaven here on earth”—reiterating the biblical vision of “a new heav-

Beyond its solid outer form, as simple and handsome as it is,

en and a new earth.” To accomplish this task, Shakers organized their

Shaker architecture displays another, more elusive dimension where

society into a new kind of American monasticism. Life was devoted

utility and theology merge—a pragmatic, yet also sublime treatment

to transforming the earth into paradise, requiring that every act be

of natural light. Although Shakers themselves were reticent about ex-

undertaken with transcendental intent, so as to “redeem” the world,

plaining this preoccupation, their buildings exhibit a love and care for

make it new, and restore it to God. In doing so, the Shaker image

managing light that is unique in American architecture.3 This mas-

of the heavenly sphere, as described in their own religious texts and

tery ranged from maximizing the penetration of daylight into build-

journals, diaries and poems, but especially “spirit drawings” that en-

ings, to ethereal effects of atmosphere conducive to the spiritual life,

vision paradise, imitated the traditional notion of a realm of space

suggesting architectural concerns that go well beyond the physical

filled with light—a place aglow at every point, and, as portrayed in

world.

the book of Revelation, quoted often by Shakers, emitting a “radiance

While good natural lighting was beneficial for everyday tasks,

like a most rare jewel.”6 This biblical picture of heaven, interpreted in

such as working and cleaning, the other, undoubtedly more profound

an 1845 spirit drawing as “mansions of light” that are “spotless” and

source of Shaker passion for natural light was religious. Despite a

“bright,” was prophetic, for it became embodied in virtually every

contemporary bias toward emphasizing the material culture and so-

work of Shaker architecture.7

cial mores of Shakers, it must be kept in mind that Shaker ambitions

Beyond identifying light with the place where God dwells, Shakers

were, at their core, divine rather than material or social.4 Spirit rather

more generally equated light with a state of holiness, and spiritual per-

than matter was of the essence. The appealing images of Shaker forms

fection. Within the Bible, which was strictly interpreted by Shakers,

this emblem ranges from divine glory to the shining faces and bodies

was based on this fundamental idea, of constructing on earth a gleam-

of saints, and culminates in the Gospel of John, which proclaims that

ing image of the divine and heavenly sphere.12 But Shakers brought

“God is light” and, as his son, Christ, is “the light of the world,” radi-

a revolutionary and largely intuitive approach to shaping light as a

ating a light that shines into darkness.8 With similar language Shak-

spiritual reality, one that stressed direct experience, and was thereby

ers announced in their Manifesto: “there is nothing in God but what

less burdened by religious doctrine. Shakers avoided every hint of ico-

is light,” and Father James Whittaker, who assumed the mantle of

nography or symbol, decoration or ornament, fresco or stained glass,

Shaker authority after Mother Ann’s death in 1784, described Christ

altar or crucifix, and thereby freed light entirely of its previous reli-

with the words: “O I love him! . . . His brightness, His beauty is

gious dogma. Shaker buildings were sanctified, instead, by their sheer

so great . . . how transcendent bright it is.” The nineteenth-century

metaphysical presence, and the serenity of luminous rooms that were

words of Shaker elder Frederick Evans have a similar ring, relating

empty and pure. This approach combined a feeling for the holy with

Christ’s transfiguration to the Shakers’ own destiny: “the Shaker order

the commonality of vernacular architecture—a unique conception of

is the source and medium of spiritual religious light to the world.”10

heaven on earth, which was evidently based on the spiritualization of

The correlation between divine light and visible light is summed

everyday things, rather than the traditional notion of a supernatural

up well by the historian of religion Mircea Eliade, writing in The Two

world in opposition to daily life. In this harmonious state, where the

and the One that “if one is ‘illumined’ by baptism; if the Holy Ghost

ordinary becomes extraordinary, and a hallowed presence can be dis-

is visualized as a manifestation of fire; if the Light of the Transfigura-

covered in every inconsequential object, there is no longer any need

tion perceived by the Apostles on Mount Tabor represents the vis-

for a church. On visiting Mt. Lebanon Shaker Village in 1867, English

ible form of Christ’s divinity, then the perfect Christian mystical life

editor William Hepworth Dixon had this very impression, noting:

should logically reveal itself by luminous phenomena.” Embodied in

“Every building, whatever be its use, has something of the air of a

this view is an ancient and mystical experience of light that has less

chapel.”13

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to do with the aesthetics of sensory impressions, and more to do with

Foremost among the ways Shaker builders gave a sacramental role

a splendor of things that reflects, for believers, their nearness to God.

to natural light was by washing its rays over utterly plain and simple

This analogy was fundamental to the twelfth-century Gothic innova-

forms, to create an air of asceticism. Unadorned walls with modest

tions of Abbot Suger at Saint-Denis, and to theologian and philoso-

details could emulate the humility of Christ, without resort to literal

pher Robert Grosseteste, who expounded on the metaphysics of light

images. This carefully conceived emptiness, where spirit replaces mat-

in his thirteenth-century treatise De Luce (On Light). For these medi-

ter, draws as well on a more universal means of evoking the sacred

eval thinkers, corporeal light was considered a spiritual substance, or

in architecture. Where “nothingness” and “the void itself” are made

“embodied spirit,” and of all things on earth, believed to be the most

palpable, and appear as essential features of a building, writes Rudolf

direct manifestation of God, the reality most similar to divine light,

Otto in his seminal book The Idea of the Holy, they do “away with

and the most seeable link between heaven and earth.

every ‘this’ and ‘here’, in order that the ‘wholly other’ may become

For over two millennia the evolution of Christian architecture—

actual . . . [and] express ‘the holy’.”14

from Byzantine mosaics and Gothic stained glass, to the clear white

The refined poverty of Shaker architecture, whose volumes are re-

light of eighteenth-century Puritan churches built in New England—

duced to their bare essence, allows qualities independent of the mate3

4

rial world to rise to awareness. The uniform texture of a humble wall,

maculate volumes, physically empty yet metaphysically full, produce

built from a single kind of brick or stone, or coated with one color

far more than negation, however, whether for motives of tidiness or

of paint, produces a monolithic volume whose cohesive play of light

virtue, since they foster something rare in architecture—a feeling of

and shade can envelop the whole in a deep sense of peace. Interiors

serenity, ideally suited to a life based upon harmony and grace.16

were rendered somewhat less stark, and far more responsive to inci-

A radical stripping away of expressive means reflects the monastic

dent light. Within pared-down rooms, a restrained palette of natural

ethos of Shakers, and visually mirrors their celibacy and abstinence,

materials, limited generally to smooth woodwork and white plaster,

not to mention their search for a haven removed from the bustle of the

permits exceptionally subtle tonalities of light to strengthen in ap-

outer world. While authentically American in its unaffected simplic-

pearance. Each space and all of its parts become bathed in a unified,

ity and practicality, the minimalism of Shaker architecture has many

somewhat ethereal atmosphere that envelops objects, and makes them

similarities with traditional models of monastic construction, nota-

participants in an overall harmony—a total impression the eye can

bly the bare stone abbeys built by Cistercians in medieval Europe,

grasp at a single glance.

and Zen temples of unadorned wood in Japan. These silent works

Within the simplification process employed by Shakers, it was the

are distinguished by chaste forms in which light and shadow become

color white—fresh and untainted, virtually immaterialized—which

the primary essence of the architecture. Using few elements, much

was most treasured for its spiritual perfection. “Pure white,” wrote

repetition, and empty planes to purify space of disorder and excess,

nineteenth-century Elder Calvin Green, “is taken to represent the

the Shakers, perhaps largely unaware of their forerunners, were able

light and highest glory of heavenly objects, because white is a certain

to create an equally elemental austerity, where a single material struck

mixture of the glory of all colors. Hence heavenly beings are repre-

by light can create a startling, unforgettable beauty.

sented so frequently as arrayed in ‘garments clean and white,’ and

Although the silence of Shaker architecture refers to visual rather

clouds of brightness are put to represent the glory of God.”15 Thus

than acoustic properties, it reflects a close relation between the senses

Shakers typically clothed their meetinghouse, the most sacred spot in

of sight and sound. It is true that everyday life in a Shaker village

the village, with an outer coat of gleaming white paint, and went on

hummed with activity, and Sundays were times of dance and song.

to spread this “heavenly garment” around most of the rooms where

During intervals between work and worship, however, community

they worked and lived, from dwelling to workshop, from laundry to

members were extremely tranquil in movement and behavior, exer-

infirmary, from bathhouse to outhouse.

cised through soft speech, walking gently, and opening and closing

A fascination with vacant walls bathed in light stems, in part, from

doors with care. The Shaker world is even more still at a visual level,

traditional associations of physical cleanliness with spiritual purity,

its every form—from floor to ceiling, building to landscape—kept

and, for Shakers, with lack of sin. “Clean your room well,” Mother

astonishingly blank, restrained, and uncluttered. This muteness of

Ann is reputed to have said, “for good spirits will not live where there

things offers mild scenes to the human eye, and they are further

is dirt. There is no dirt in heaven.” Putting into practice this age-old

hushed by soft gradations of light into shadow. “A happy quiet reigns

notion, that cleanliness is next to godliness, Shaker builders gave every

around,” wrote one nineteenth-century visitor, “even in what is seen

material a flawless finish, and wrought them into forms that avoided

of the eye and heard of the ear, Mount Lebanon strikes you as a place

dust and dirt, and could be easily swept and polished daily. Such im-

where it is always Sunday.”17

A different kind of tranquility is created by the unremitting fo-

so many visual echoes creates a kind of mystical emptiness. The ef-

cus of light sources within space. An orderly pattern of illumination

fect is analogous to a Christian plainsong, or Gregorian chant, whose

helped to organize Shaker rooms, along with human behavior inside

resonating tones help a person escape ordinary consciousness, and

them, while reducing perceptual tensions in space, and imitating the

enter into a contemplative, even transcendental state of mind.19

perfect order that Shakers considered part of heaven. Each window

Perceptual forces turn linear, and polyrhythmic, in the central

is visually weighted, and fastened in place, by the outline of a con-

halls of Shaker dwellings. Windows grouped in end walls lure and

trasting frame. This centripetal force was expanded in scope by posi-

guide the moving eye, like beacons. Enhancing this longitudinal flow

tioning windows to stabilize the space they illumine, exerting visual

is an identical collection of light sources flanking the halls at either

pressure not merely by geometry but also by a perceptual salience and

side. This cadenced and faintly basilican order derives from the bilat-

commanding distribution of light. Often a small room will be domi-

eral symmetry of Shaker architecture, and its underlying expression

nated by a single window, which becomes a powerful center of atten-

of gender separation and equality. While not touching, brethren and

tion, as captivating as the primal image of a fire at night or a lamp

sisters occupied and moved through facing halves of dwelling houses,

in the window, able to grip the human eye like a visual magnet. In

each a mirror image of the other. Disposed around the central axis is

larger rooms windows are grouped to emit a concerted and balanced

a series of matching tones, produced by twin forms of window and

light, maintaining order with a steadying cluster of radiant spots. The

vault, doorway and corridor, stair and banister. The precisely bal-

ability of such nodal points to catch a wandering eye, and bring it to

anced light and shade in these orderly rows acts to visually nudge and

focus, is not unlike that of a traditional religious diptych or triptych,

propel, but also to strictly regulate, human procession, and guide it

or, more generally, a mandala whose religious aim is to draw the be-

along a “straight and narrow path.” Taken as a whole, the ritualized

holder into a more pensive state, and assist the inward concentration

choreography of a Shaker hallway embodies the concept of a spiritual

of prayer. I am not suggesting that Shakers gazed upon windows in

journey, involving a series of passage rites that are marked by and lead

such a manner, but that, beyond creating visual equilibrium, the con-

toward the light, so that even the most habitual walk through a dwell-

centrated light has a subtle and largely unconscious effect of keeping

ing may be experienced as a kind of pilgrimage. This is particularly

eye and mind calm, and perpetually centered, rather than dispersed

true in Church and Center Family dwellings, their axes often pointed

or distracted.

like arrows to the village meetinghouse—whose still point of light

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The power of balanced lighting to settle space, and furnish an at-

was the spiritual center for an entire community.

mosphere of repose, reached an apogee in the Shaker meetinghouse.

Intersecting the equipoise of horizontal axes, and rooting them in

The entire meeting room is surrounded by a close alternation of win-

place, are the vertical axes of double staircases, whose processional

dow and wall, eliminating directional forces, and shedding an even

routes rise in a series of zigzag flights from basement to attic. Where

light to every corner. Equally calming is a measured flow of on-and-

these stairs culminate in skylights, as they do so magnificently at

off tones, as soothing to the eye as a shimmer of light upon water, or

Pleasant Hill and Hancock, Canterbury and Enfield, their axes not

a flicker of leaves in a tree. Optical rhythms, initially derived from

only gather space around twin luminous cores, but also conjure up

repeating patterns of window and wall, sun and shade, continue into

a mythical image of light above and darkness below. One ascends

oscillations of white plaster and blue woodwork. This austerity with

toward light, and the celestial domain, as if rising along a stairway to 5

heaven. In doing so, the tightly regimented spatial order slowly gives

panels that slide or fold into unexpected permutations, and might dis-

way to an awareness of freedom from earthly ties. The increase of light

appear altogether, away from dust, into window reveals or the depth

and airiness with altitude carries, with it, a mystical sense of levita-

of a wall.

tion, and spiritual flight. This kind of cosmic situation, we are told

Beyond its conventional job to illuminate space and open views,

by Eliade in The Sacred and the Profane, “reveals one of the deepest

the window touches something deeper in the human psyche, and has

meanings of sacred space,” for it allows climbers on the move, pen-

long been identified with the human eye, expressed in adages such as

etrating level after level, to remain in their world while in “permanent

“the eye is the window to the soul” and “the window is the eye of a

communication with the sky.”20

building.” For reverent Shakers, the eye-like window served even as a

The Shaker exaltation of light is immediately apparent on building

source of redemption. “The eye,” it was written in the Gospel of Mat-

exteriors, even from a distance, due to the number of large windows

thew, “is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is sound, your whole

cut out of walls. Fenestration can be so excessive that walls appear

body will be full of light; but if your eye is not sound, your whole body

built out of holes as much as solid material, as if dematerialized into

will be full of darkness.”22 Connecting this biblical analogy to archi-

screens, similar to the porous masonry walls of nineteenth-century

tecture are the nineteenth-century words of Eldress Aurelia Mace, of

textile mills in New England. Of course there were practical reasons

Sabbathday Lake: “Good and evil are typified by light and darkness.

to admit as much daylight as possible to these buildings. Uniformly

Therefore, if we bring light into a dark room, the darkness disappears,

well-lit rooms enhanced visual acuity in places of work, reduced the

and inasmuch as a soul is filled with good, evil will disappear.”23

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6

waste of energy on lamps, and, in an era before the adoption of elec-

In packing many large windows into walls, Shakers gave to their

tric illumination in the late nineteenth century, limited the danger of

buildings a state of transparency that revealed the world inside and

open flames in candles or lanterns. By gathering daylight from mul-

out. Beyond its spiritual implications, this remarkable increase in the

tiple sources, with each room often receiving light from at least two

traffic of light served a more rational aim of making things lucid, ex-

directions, the Shaker and mill builder alike were able to create glare-

posing every scrap of space and every human event to the scrutiny of

free interiors with consistent illumination.

vision and thought. In their complete devotion to visual clarity, and

Unlike factory windows, however, the Shaker window was occa-

what they considered honesty as opposed to deception, the Shakers

sionally an instrument of subtle modulation. While their primary role

embraced a value of light that has been treasured since the writings

was reducing drafts and retaining heat during severe New Hampshire

of Plato in the Timaeus, and his metaphor for all knowing as the “fire

winters, the solid wood shutters employed on windows at Canterbury

within the eye”—the capacity of light to illuminate the human mind

and Enfield could finely tune the amount and intensity of light in

by its transport of information and consequent enhancement of the

space, for they were operable by hand from within rooms. Illumina-

perception of truth.

tion could be instantly brightened or dimmed, aimed or positioned,

In making the Shaker village instantly and effortlessly visible,

by adjusting various panels within a shutter assembly. These mechani-

the thousands of glass panes used in windows had the further effect

cal marvels were devised with the same practical versatility as other

of maintaining community order by a permanent state of openness,

Shaker gadgets and implements, and often combined into multiple

not to mention an all-seeing tool of surveillance. Large uncovered

windows not only denied privacy, but also served as monitors to ob-

pigments, it must be borne in mind that the palette of each room was

serve and enforce “proper” conduct. The need for excessive visibility

quite restricted, allowing a narrow range of closely matched colors to

was spelled out in the Millennial Laws, directing elders to “strictly

intensify the radiance without disturbing its peaceful state. Whether

oversee” the families placed under their care, and about whom they

natural or stained, painted a warm hue or, in the case of the meet-

were to “know everything” as a result of members “laying open” their

inghouse, a “heavenly blue,” the tinted wood serves also as a kind of

rooms and minds. In his book Discipline and Punish, French philoso-

frame to delineate white plaster, exaggerating its purity by contrast.27

pher Michel Foucault describes the capacity of this kind of optical

Woodwork reached its greatest luminosity when coated with pure

state to control activity and eliminate idleness as a “micro-physics

yellow paint, a hue long associated with gold, and biblical visions of

of power,” whose “seeing machine” can economize life without any

gold in heaven.28 The chrome-yellow paint developed by Shakers was

surveilling eye actually being present.24

especially dazzling, for it was not merely a matte color, but a sub-

But all these attributes of Shaker windows ultimately served a

stance in which the binding medium used for pigments, generally lin-

higher purpose—to infuse earthly matter with transcendental radi-

seed oil, formed a semi-transparent film that could absorb and then

ance, so that “earth will then have become heaven.” The spiritual im-

reemit incident light, producing a deep, rich, almost incandescent

plications are obvious, for Shakers identified luminosity with Christ

hue.29 When applied to trim and, occasionally, entire floors, as was

and God, and considered light to be the visible form of divinity itself,

common up to the mid-nineteenth century, this exceptionally clear

as well as the power by which God communicates and reveals Him-

and bright hue made it seem as if a divine radiation had entered inside

self. And so the abundant light from Shaker windows was shed upon

and been absorbed into woodwork, from out of which it continued to

a continuous lining of reflective materials, to brighten rooms even

emanate. Rooms, to adapt a Shaker phrase, became “clothed with the

more. Most reflective of all is the glossy white plaster of ceilings and

sun, which typifies divine light.”30 For the same reason, yellow-paint-

walls, whose soft gleam and blurry reflections make the surface ap-

ed window reveals bring to mind a halo, nimbus, or aureole, as do,

pear self-radiant. The polished and hard finish coat can display as well

more abstractly, the yellow trim and peg rails outlining white plaster.

as disseminate light, leading New England writer Nathaniel Haw-

With so much radiation captured and shining in simple rooms,

thorne, following an 1851 visit to Hancock, to speak of “plaster as

one can readily think of the Shaker interior as a construct of light

smooth as marble.”26

as much as matter, a construct able to satisfy the “pleading” of the

25

Complementing the resplendent whiteness of Shaker rooms is a

Shaker “soul” for “a nearer relation to its Creator and for light, more

warm luster of woodwork, whose grainy texture was rubbed and bur-

light.”31 Reinforcing this impression is a close correspondence between

nished, at times washed with a bright orange stain, to faintly reflect

the Shakers’ own rainbow-like palette—red, orange, yellow, green,

incident rays as well as draw a portion of light beneath the surface and

blue, indigo, and violet, playing off a brilliant white ground—and

make the inherently dim substance glow from within. The sheen was

the colors of light found in the sky. Reproduced in buildings were the

further amplified in brilliance where early Shakers applied oil paint

tonalities of the heavens, where sunlight is continually broken up into

to doors and floorboards, window reveals and peg rails, often with

its full spectrum of color. It is hard to imagine a more celestial image

startling hues such as mustard yellow or red ocher. Despite these bold

than these gentle, clear, transparent colors brought alive in changing

7

light. Proposing a similar thought several centuries ago from a Shaker

as out to the village and nature. A vertical counterpart of this dual

perspective was Elder Green, writing that “the purity and glory of

aperture occurs in the Church Family dwelling at Hancock, where

the seven heavenly colors”—precisely the basic Shaker colors—are

four double skylights guide zenithal light through two different levels

the same as those emitted from a glass prism, and thus embody “the

of attic space.

shining of the eternal sun,” as well as “the glory and brightness” of God.32

rous networks of corridors and doorways, aligned orthogonally to si-

The interplay of large windows and subtle reflections give Shaker

phon illumination through wide buildings, especially collective dwell-

buildings a soft inner glow, which is accented by more intense light

ings that housed up to one hundred members. Long central hallways

where illumination is caught within deep openings. Highlights of

often extend from one window-lit end of an axis to the other, and

this kind are commonly produced in thick windows, whose reveals

are crisscrossed by shorter channels targeted on perimeter windows.

appear to delay some of the rays passing through, concentrating them

From four different directions, therefore, daylight is guided without

inside a void carved from the wall. Also gathering extra light, while

interruption through a chain of repeated openings. Intersecting these

giving it a distinct plastic form, are dormers cut into attic roofs, and

horizontal tunnels around stairs are vertical shafts for light to flow,

skylights shaped as cupolas or lanterns, each producing a breathtak-

produced by leaving flights open to one side, and carving gaps be-

ing presence out of absence. Skylight design reached an artistic peak

tween stair and floor so a small amount of light can slip through. The

at Pleasant Hill, in both the Center dwelling and trustees’ office, to

result is a three-dimensional permeability in which light is conveyed

the point of completely transcending its practical purpose to carry

along many routes, and whose sponge-like structure is far superior in

light downward. Each sculptural cavity is lit indirectly from several

illuminating power to the cellular compartments common to most

directions, to crown the building with a metaphysical figure of light,

buildings up until the twentieth century.

which seems to float overhead as a heavenly vault and, for Shakers, to emulate the work of God.

8

Shakers created a more comprehensive sharing of light in their po-

Shaker ingenuity with borrowed light embodies the same basic principles—thrift, efficiency, utility—found in their other laborsav-

Holding a special place in the Shaker repertoire of light sources

ing inventions, such as the clothespin or flat broom, revolving oven or

is the interior window. Illumination pouring through outer walls is

circular saw. The interior window got as much use as possible out of

not allowed to languish in perimeter rooms, leaving innermost spaces

available light, rather than wasting this natural gift. But such wide-

in darkness. Instead the penetrating energy is sent further inside by

spread dispersal says something, as well, about the fundamental Shak-

glazed openings cut into dividing walls and partitions, allowing light

er practice of social, economic, and spiritual equality for all members.

to seep from room to room and permeate a large building mass. Il-

How could communality, not to mention dignity, be achieved if cer-

lumination is thereby shared with, or borrowed by, spaces that would

tain members or activities were privileged with the benefits and, for

otherwise be excessively dim. Sometimes two apertures are closely

Shakers, sanctity of light, while others were relegated to darkness and

aligned to form, together, a double window, capable of aiming the flow

gloom? By granting each room a just and equal right to natural illu-

of light across an intervening space, such as a staircase. These coupled

mination, buildings gave visible form to the underlying Shaker spirit

windows have the further benefit of opening up views through lay-

of sharing, and also to their utopian dream of a communal society

ers of wall, thereby expanding visual contact between rooms, as well

united by religious conviction. Therefore light, the medium of practi-

cal vision and divine blessing, was apportioned to all, and stretched

settlement visualizes a cosmic order. North–south axes echo the axes

into the darkest corners of every space, even to modest storage areas

of earth and sky, and east–west axes are inscribed by the solar course.

such as closets and attics.

This cosmological image is further pronounced at sunrise and sunset,

One last aspect of Shaker architecture deserves comment. The re-

especially upon hillside sites such as Canterbury and Pleasant Hill,

curring motion of natural light implies not only illumination, but

Mt. Lebanon and Sabbathday Lake, where simple monochromatic

also a revelation of cosmic time, and immersion in the slow revolution

buildings are painted over with complementary washes of blue sky

of heavenly spheres. The passage of time was, in general, of constant

and low orange sun. Adding an intimate scale to these imprints of

concern to Shakers, as epitomized in Mother Ann’s axiom: “Do all

sky is the uniform texture of Shaker buildings, whose masonry or

your work as though you had a thousand years to live on earth, and

clapboards are able to register tiny shifts in the slant of the sun. Par-

as you would if you knew you must die tomorrow.” They kept busy

ticularly impressive displays of this kind appear on white limestone

every moment and saved time with efficient ways, while, conversely,

dwellings at Pleasant Hill, whose reliefs, whether from rustication or

avoided hurried movements and devoted time to perfecting what they

raised mortar, come alive under glancing rays at noon as well as dawn

made. Everyday life was a planned succession of activity and prayer

and dusk, dissolving solidity into a veil.

that took place at prescribed moments, marked by the ringing of bells

The consummate skill of Shaker builders in catching hold of a

and rehearsed rituals. In their daily attempts to bring heaven to earth,

flowing sky, and what the Bible describes as God’s “greater light”

however, Shakers must have also been mindful of, and closely attuned

that “rules the day,” is particularly evident within their architecture.

to, the rhythmical currents of light in the sky—a kind of time that is

Smooth surfaces enhance and multiply shifting intensities of light

eternal, celestial, and experiential, rather than merely practical. The

through the day. Multiple windows and channels ensure that tem-

patterns of their lives were calibrated in seasons, days, and hours, in-

poral effects reach every space, with sun arriving in various rooms at

crements in the solar course. These cyclic rhythms suggest a desire to

contrasting hours and from different directions—at times streaming

live close to the pulse of nature, and be in harmony with the flow of

horizontally through a window, only to then rain from a skylight,

the cosmos. While Shakers may not have planned their buildings to

perhaps trickle out of a transom window, or angle down a cascade of

brighten and dim with clocklike precision, in concert with an arc-

steps, continually ricocheting from one reflective plane to another. At

ing sun, their architecture makes one aware of the turn of the earth,

dawn and dusk, long beams of sun pierce deeply inside, to splash onto

and the ebb and flow of natural light. One knows—through a direct

walls and spread around rooms, allowing a Shaker “to inhabit the

perception of the senses—that he or she stands in a place suffused

universe,” to use the words of Bachelard, just as “the universe comes

with the moving sky. Brought near and opened up to human percep-

to inhabit his house.”34

tion, to an extent unprecedented in American architecture, are daily

By heightening the perception of celestial motion, Shaker archi-

reminders of the words of Genesis: “God said, ‘Let there be lights in

tecture was able to make visible to the eye those cosmic powers and

the firmament of the heavens to separate the day from the night; and

natural rhythms that closely govern life on earth. Brought forth as

let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years.’”

well by these gentle perturbations, achieved in buildings that are ma-

33

Beginning with its orthogonal layout, every line straight and

terially static but immaterially alive, is a fluid metaphysical presence.

square, tying land and buildings to the cardinal points, the Shaker

Like pigments on canvas, the feeblest colors sent from the sky are vis9

ibly strengthened on barren white walls, turning some rooms violet and others yellow. One cannot fail to notice these subtle auras that dwell within empty space for a time, shifting in tone as the sun slips by. Mornings begin dim and blue, combed through with orange as day breaks, only to bleach a crisp white through the middle of day, at times burnished gold where sunlight reflects off a smooth pine floor, but always left soft around the edges by nuanced shadows. Simple geometry and stark planes intensify the spectral currents, which far surpass any ornament, and demonstrate that the Shakers knew precisely what to leave out of their buildings—emptying them of everything inessential, in order to throw attention to something else, a reality not of the physical world.

Notes 1. It should be mentioned from the outset that while the past tense is used repeatedly in this book to convey a bygone era when Shaker architecture was at its height, there remains today a tiny but energetic Shaker community of a handful of individuals at Sabbathday Lake, Maine, which is still open to new converts. My apologies to all for the “past” tense, whose aim is to clarify the Shaker culture of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which conceived and erected the buildings discussed and portrayed in this book. 2. Quoted in June Sprigg, By Shaker Hands (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975), p. 5. 3. Despite an undeniable eloquence and practical knowledge in handling a “material” as intangible as daylight, Shakers offer scant evidence of their architectural intentions with this medium, whether in primary sources such as letters or journals, or the nineteenth-century Millennial Laws, whose dictates were formulated to maintain ideals and regulate behavior in Shaker communities. Of course this silence about working with light is common, as well, to other past eras when daylight played a central role in the conception of architecture. Perhaps this silence is generally due to the limits of language in describing or elucidating light, but in the case of Shakers it must equally stem from a communal ethos and way of life based on individual modesty and restraint. Architecture remained deliberately anonymous and unexplained since work, itself, was considered a form of worship and prayer, and the act of building, as every Shaker craft, was seen as an offering to God, rather than a personal or creative accomplishment. 10

4. Among the exceptions to this materialist tendency in Shaker literature, I would like to mention the inspired writings of Edward Deming Andrews, Amy Stechler, Thomas Merton, and June Sprigg. 5. Elder Frederick W. Evans, Autobiography of a Shaker, and Revelation of the Apocalypse (Mt. Lebanon, N.Y.: Shaker Community, 1869), p. 39. 6. Edward Deming Andrews, The People Called Shakers: A Search for the Perfect Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953), p. 23; Revised Standard Version (hereinafter RSV), Revelation 21 and 22. 7. Edward Deming Andrews and Faith Andrews, Visions of the Heavenly Sphere: A Study in Shaker Religious Art (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1969), pp. 94–95. 8. RSV, 1 John 1:5; RSV, John 8:12. 9. From The Manifesto (1818), quoted in Robley Edward Whitson, ed., The Shakers: Two Centuries of Spiritual Reflection (New York: Paulist Press, 1983), p. 220; quoted in Andrews, People Called Shakers, p. 50. 10. Quoted in John McKelvie Whitworth, God’s Blueprints: A Sociological Study of Three Utopian Sects (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975), p. 57. 11. Mircea Eliade, The Two and the One, trans. J. M. Cohen (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), p. 60. 12. See, for instance, François Cali, ed., Architecture of Truth (London: Thames and Hudson, 1957); Otto von Simson, The Gothic Cathedral (New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1956); and Christian F. Otto, Space into Light (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1980). 13. William Hepworth Dixon, New America (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1867), p. 305. 14. Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, trans. John W. Harvey (London: Oxford University Press, 1923), pp. 69–70. 15. Calvin Green, “Discourses,” quoted in John T. Kirk, The Shaker World: Art, Life, Belief (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997), p. 132. 16. While an extreme degree of simplification and rigor persisted in Shaker architecture into the mid-1800s, this purism diminished following the Civil War, as changing aesthetics and Victorian embellishments began to transform the classical image of Shaker space. A growing taste for “worldly” decoration seems to have paralleled the impending collapse of Shaker society during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, though this connection is hotly debated by scholars. Whether from a desire to appear up to date in order to attract new converts, or simply to welcome new material possibilities and outward signs of progress, Shakers began to adorn and thus dim their previously bare and luminous buildings— varnishing woodwork, cladding floors with boldly printed linoleum, and covering walls with wallpaper and ornamentation, or painting them sen-

timental colors such as lavender or mint green. These comments are not meant to diminish the quality of late Shaker architecture, which has its own authentic place in a living and changing process, but to simply point out that these later, more materialist, expressions directly reduced the presence, significance, and spiritual character of Shaker light. 17. Dixon, New America, p. 305. 18. The depth of human meaning in the archetypal image of a “lamp in the window” at night is discussed in Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans. Maria Jolas (New York: Orion Press, 1964), pp. 33–35. For an analogous experience with natural light in architecture, see my Poetics of Light (Tokyo: A&U, 1987), Light in Japanese Architecture (Tokyo: A&U, 1995), and The Architecture of Natural Light (London: Thames & Hudson, 2009). 19. It is ironic, yet perhaps another instance of the Shaker resolution of opposites, that these calm interiors were the site of such exhuberant displays of ritualized dance, whose marching steps, not to mention shaking and whirling, clapping and stomping, were an integral part of Shaker worship and, in some respects, expanded upon the spatial echoes found in the meetinghouse. 20. Eliade describes the ritual stair that opens to sky and a world above, thereby connecting earth with heaven, as an axis mundi. See Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. Willard R. Trask (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1959), pp. 32–42. 21. The dissolving of solid walls into light has a long history in religious architecture, culminating in the glass curtains of Gothic cathedrals, and especially the small palatine church of Sainte-Chapelle in Paris (1246). But unlike thirteenth-century stained-glass windows, Shaker windows were closely tied to the sky outside by their clear glazing and placement near eye level, and completely avoided any sort of didactic or doctrinaire role by their total absence of icons and symbols. 22. RSV, Matthew 6:22–23. 23. Eldress Aurelia G. Mace, The Aletheia: Spirit of Truth (Farmington, Me.: Knowlton & McLeary, 1907), p. 140. 24. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, trans. Alan Sheridan (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), pp. 139 and 207. 25. From The Shaker Manifesto XI (1881), quoted in Whitson, ed., The Shakers, p. 125. 26. Nathaniel Hawthorne, American Notebooks by Nathaniel Hawthorne (based upon the original manuscripts in the Pierpont Morgan Library),

ed. Randall Stewart (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1932), pp. 229–230. 27. The color harmonies of Shaker walls bear an uncanny resemblance to early twentieth-century canvases of the De Stijl, an artistic movement centered in the Netherlands, which sought also to express, through geometry and color, a utopian ideal of spiritual harmony and order. Especially similar to Shaker walls are the abstract pictures of Dutch painter Piet Mondrian, composed of nothing but a few colored squares framed with lines on a luminous white ground. As the Shakers, Mondrian was a mystic who admired technology, and whose unceasing visual austerity and simplification led to a rectilinear use of primary colors—red, blue, and yellow—as building blocks of an elementary art based on spiritual needs. 28. From time immemorial, precious gold has been identified with the divine for its inherent luminosity and immutability. Golden images were thought by early Christians to predominate in heaven, as recounted in the book of Revelation, and appeared frequently in Shaker visions and spirit drawings. See Andrews and Andrews, Visions of the Heavenly Sphere. 29. I thank Christian Goodwillie, Curator of Collections at Hancock Shaker Village, for bringing this to my attention, as well as explaining the restoration of original yellow paint in several rooms at South Union and Hancock. The luminous colors applied originally to wood by early nineteenth-century Shakers have been largely obscured by later Shaker repainting and varnishing, using very dark tones, as well as by similar decisions of twentieth-century curators. In one recently restored and particularly radiant room in Hancock’s Church Family dwelling, identified as Room 16, the closely harmonized pigments include chrome-yellow paint on a double cupboard and wood trim above the floor, set off by a closely matched mixture of red lead and red ocher on a built-in case of drawers, and yellow ocher on baseboards and floorboards. See Christian Goodwillie, “Coloring the Past: Shaker Painted Interiors,” in The Magazine Antiques (Sept. 2005): 80–87. 30. From The Shaker Manifesto XIII (1883), quoted in Whitson, ed., The Shakers, p. 321. 31. From The Shaker Manifesto XI (1881), quoted in Whitson, ed., The Shakers, p. 326. 32. Green, “Discourses,” quoted in Kirk, The Shaker World, p. 132. 33. RSV, Genesis 1:14–15. 34. Bachelard, Poetics of Space, p. 51.

11

White-Painted Woodwork Meetinghouse (1820) Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

1

Simplicity• priStine

light

Monotone M ass The radical simplification produced by a single exterior color, char-

visual friction or excitement, range from the absolute purity of a

acteristic of Shaker architecture, serves to unite each form, while ac-

white meetinghouse, to the monotone crust of stone or brick around

centuating the play of light over a surface, enveloping the whole in

a dwelling, or continuous coat of yellow paint on a workshop.

a subdued atmosphere. These monochromatic effects, free of either

14

Facing. White Limestone Façade First West Family Dwelling (1811–12) Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

Below. Yellow-Painted Volume Brethren’s Shop (1810) Hancock, Massachusetts

Pure White Cavit y A spotless surface of smooth plaster and white paint serves to purify Shaker space. This image of perfection reveals the slightest sign of dirt, is devoid, one might even say absolved, of darkness, and is inherently ethereal, reduced to nothing but sheer light.

16

Facing. Ministry Hall Meetinghouse Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

Below. Front Entry Hall Center Family Dwelling House (1824–34) Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

Central Hall Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

18

Ministry Dining Room Center Family Dwelling House (Ministry Addition 1845) Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

19

Fr aMed Whiteness In part to avoid smudgy finger marks and keep white surfaces entirely

the further benefit of perceptually heightening the purity of whiteness

clean, and thereby virtuous, Shakers stained or painted the bordering

left unblemished. By having its chaste glow framed and thrown into

elements touched by people—banisters and drawer pulls, doors and

relief, the white ground is emancipated from the wall, and its whites

floorboards, peg rails and trim. These darker points and edgings have

made even whiter by contrast.

Left. Hallway Ceiling Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

20

Facing. Entrance Hall Ministry Shop (1839, remodeled 1875) Sabbathday Lake, Maine

Attached Outhouse Ministry Shop Sabbathday Lake, Maine

22

Wood Knobs and Drawer Pulls Ministry Shop Sabbathday Lake, Maine

23

BetWeen Wood & Plaster A harmonious blending of heaven and earth was achieved by a Shaker

extends up into peg rails, and a partial sheathing of walls, elaborated

palette reduced, often, to two very simple materials—white plaster

at times into long banks of built-in cabinets and drawers stretching

above, and plain woodwork below—so that dwelling occurred in-

to the ceiling, whose continuous relief is brought alive by raking light

between, linked to both of these realms. The wood of a floor normally

from corner windows.

Left. Built-in Cupboards in Sisters’ Waiting Room Church Family Dwelling House (1830–31) Hancock, Massachusetts

24

Facing. Wood-Lined Alcove Spin Shop (1795, remodeled 1816) Canterbury, New Hampshire

Facing. Meetingroom Church Family Dwelling House Hancock, Massachusetts

Above. Storage Wall in Sisters’ Attic Church Family Dwelling House (1793, remodeled 1837) Canterbury, New Hampshire

27

Wooden Caver n In several rare but beautiful cases, soft wood lines an entire Shaker room, wrapping around every surface and over the ceiling to produce an impression of being inside the wood. In such a monolithic volume, the whole space fills with a warm tawny atmosphere. The ambience is golden, and faintly celestial, where wood is washed with a bright yellow or orange stain, as if transmuting the earthen material into a more pure and, for Shakers, divine substance. Above. Woodshed and Privy Schoolhouse (1823, remodeled 1863) Canterbury, New Hampshire Left. Laundry Room and Drying Racks Laundry (1816, remodeled through 1908) Canterbury, New Hampshire Facing. Attic Trustee’s Office (1813) Hancock, Massachusetts Below. Closet and Staircase Schoolhouse Canterbury, New Hampshire

28

Window above Stair to Roof Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

2

Order • FOcuSed

light

MesMerizing WindoW The Shaker striving for order and calm gave a prominent visual role to the window, which often appears as the seminal force around which

Facing. Window Triptych Center Family Dwelling House (1822–33) South Union, Kentucky

a room is developed. This centering power is magnified by simple geometry, symmetric placement, empty walls, and a halo-like frame, which are all further strengthened by a radiating pattern of light from a still source. Left. Ministry Hall Meetinghouse (1794) Sabbathday Lake, Maine

32

Window Diptych Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

34

Meetingroom Church Family Dwelling House Hancock, Massachusetts

35

inCantation The repetition of standardized elements in Shaker architecture served

broad stripes of white plaster, divided by lines of blue paint on wood-

basic needs of economy and order, while ensuring anonymity and plain-

en beams, knee braces, and peg rails. As a result, tremulous patterns

ness, but also gave to every room a calming rhythm that served the spir-

of light and dark envelop the entire worship space, and its sacred dance,

it. This reverberation, suggestive of the rise and fall of a fugue or chant,

in a visual incantation, whose simple waves could instantly soothe

is especially pronounced in the Shaker meetinghouse, whose windows

mind and soul, and invoke a faintly mystical spell.

shed a mesmerizing pulse of energy. Alternating rays of light echo into

36

Rhythms of Sun and Shadow, White and Blue Meetinghouse Sabbathday Lake, Maine

Meetingroom Meetinghouse Sabbathday Lake, Maine

ConCentriC tonalities

38

The parallel realms of space characteristic of Shaker dwellings pro-

consistently drawing attention back to an invisible centerline. Con-

duce a hypnotic symmetry of bright and dark zones. These figures of

tributing to this representation, as well as mechanism, of self-unity

light, most highly developed in the Center Family dwellings of South

are the facing nodes of windows and doorways, echoing into subtler

Union and Pleasant Hill, furnish twin centers in a nonhierarchical

patterns of indirect and reflected light, all exerting a perceptual power

order. A perceptual balance of the whole is maintained by the dual

that arrests and settles the human mind, while disciplining human

arrangement of a large number of stronger and weaker optical foci,

movement.

First-Floor Hall Center Family Dwelling House South Union, Kentucky

First-Floor Hall, with Circle of Light Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

douBle helix At the heart of the trustees’ office at Pleasant Hill is an extraordi-

finally arrive at an attic landing immediately beneath the luminous

nary double staircase built by Micajah Burnett. Considered by many

source—evocative, both in substance and shape, of the heavenly

the pinnacle of Shaker architecture, the stair consists of two fac-

vault. Wood and plaster turn into light the higher one rises, similar to

ing spirals that coil up to a single oval skylight. As if enacting the

the rarefaction, described in the 1871 Shaker Manifesto, of “all matter,

geometry of light above, and continually turning in on its center,

more or less attenuated, sublimated, etherealized, up to the lowest

each curled flight rises through a growing rain of zenithal light, to

sphere, and thence up to the heaven of heavens.”

Left. Whorl of Stairs Trustees’ Office (1839–41) Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

40

Facing. Oval Cupola above Twin Staircase Trustees’ Office Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

tWin sk ylights The twin stairways of Canterbury’s dwelling house are gradually pulled up four different levels by showers of light from a pair of attic skylights, one for brethren and one for sisters. Each ascent finally arrives at a chrome-yellow landing, set barely above the everyday floor, and appearing to lead nowhere—but the sky itself.

Attic Skylight over Brethren’s Staircase Church Family Dwelling House Canterbury, New Hampshire

42

Flying stairCase Beckoning from the top of twin stairs at Hancock’s dwelling house

terline, and rises through the shower of light as a “flying staircase,” as

is an unexpected vortex of light. Skylight is funneled through two

if the last flight were freed of gravity, allowing one to rise and hover

different levels of attic space, via a large opening cut in the floor, to

in air. Reinforcing this upward sweep, and the gathering power, of a

bathe, halo, and seemingly to consecrate, a single freestanding stair.

luminous core are angling rays of falling light that appear to converge

For those climbing to the attic, the two facing stairs arrive at an as-

on, and point back up to, a higher reality.

tonishing sight. The final ascent shifts back 90˚ to the building’s cenFlying Stair of Double Attic Church Family Dwelling House Hancock, Massachusetts

43

tiered sk ylights The first means of heavenly ascent built by Micajah Burnett at Pleas-

est storage area for winter clothing, along with its ring of poplar draw-

ant Hill was a double staircase in the Center Family dwelling. These

ers, seems to be gathered and blessed by light, as if it were a chapel.

dual flights are drawn upward, and crowned at the top, by two suc-

The penultimate stage is followed by a dormer-lit void higher above,

cessive zenithal lights, whose illumination leaks through gaps in each

whose flood of light leads to the roof, but whose journey points to

floor below. First to emerge is an attic skylight whose brilliance, as

empty sky—suggesting a doorway onto the heavens.

well as emanation, perceptually centers the room beneath. This mod-

44

Cracks of Light in Twin Staircase Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

Attic Skylight at Top of Twin Stair Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

Below. Dormer-Skylight above Poplar Drawers Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

46

Facing. Final Flight to Roof Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

Corner of Attic Center Family Dwelling House South Union, Kentucky

3

luminOSity• inner

light

M a xiMuM Fenestr ation In their efforts to squeeze as much daylight as possible into buildings,

meetinghouse was made especially airy and bright by a continuous

Shakers pierced the outer walls with closely spaced windows, allowing

band of repeating windows. But rendered almost as porous, and at

illumination to stream in from every side. As the most sacred place in

times cathedral-like, were utilitarian buildings such as laundries and

the Shaker settlement, and the nearest thing to heaven on earth, the

machine shops, tanneries and poultry houses, mills and barns.

Left. Circles of Windows on Three Different Levels Round Barn (1826, rebuilt 1865) Hancock, Massachusetts

50

Facing. Meetingroom Windows Meetinghouse (1792–93, moved from Shirley to Hancock 1962) Hancock, Massachusetts

interior shutter s The internal shutters with which windows are equipped at Canter-

be regulated at will, like a camera aperture, according to weather,

bury and Enfield permit a range of lighting adjustments. At Enfield’s

temperature, and human activity. When the shutters are opened, they

dwelling house, a four-shutter system allows each panel to be oper-

fold back and disappear into window reveals.

ated independently, or in combination with others, so that light can

52

Four-Shutter System Church Family Dwelling House (1837–41) Enfield, New Hampshire

53

White kentuCky liMestone

Facing. Front Façade Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

The muted radiance of limestone dwellings at Pleasant Hill derives from an exceptionally white stone, known locally as Kentucky marble. The blocks vary slightly in tone and texture, according to where they were taken from the quarry and how they were subsequently cut, and were given an added perceptual depth by raised mortar and brighter stones used for lintels. The result is a wall from which light appears to issue, rather than merely reflect.

54

Below. Front Entry with Side-by-Side Doors Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

55

White-Painted stoneWork In the dark basement rooms of Pleasant Hill’s Center dwelling, scarce light admitted through windows is conserved by continual reflections off the white-painted foundation walls. Beyond brightening spaces

Facing. Basement Workroom Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

that would otherwise be gloomy, whiteness sensitizes the texture to raking light, folding cast shadows into highlights, and making the dim illumination appear brighter by contrast.

Left. Basement Kitchen Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

56

White on White As daylight pours into Shaker buildings, it immediately reflects off mirror-like floors and silky white plaster. The whiteness is neither uniform nor sterile, however, for a varied interplay of source and sur-

Facing. Plaster Vaulting Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

face produces a thousand subtle, almost indefinable tones. As a result, rooms do not appear superficially bright, but seem to have soaked up light, as if taking possession of falling rays and wedding them into their own substance. Left. Central Hallway Center Family Dwelling House South Union, Kentucky

58

yelloW light The luminous yellow paint used routinely on woodwork by early Shakers, set off by slightly dimmer yellow-oranges and yellow-reds, conveys a belief in color as materialized light. Sharing an intimation

Facing. Yellow Window Frame Church Family Dwelling House Hancock, Massachusetts

of heaven with adjoining white plaster are the radiant yellows of doors and window frames, cabinets and peg rails, baseboards and floors, all of which seem to emanate joy from unexpected directions, and give earth-bound rooms a skyward inflection. Left. Chrome-Yellow Trim and Yellow-Ocher Floor Church Family Dwelling House Hancock, Massachusetts

60

Facing. Yellow-Ocher Trim, Red-Ocher Baseboards, and Chrome-Yellow Floor Ministry Shop (1846–47) South Union, Kentucky

Above. Yellow Cupboards and Woodbox Church Family Dwelling House Canterbury, New Hampshire 63

lustrous Wood Unpainted Shaker woodwork appears at first glance to be dark and

with angle of view and incident rays. This muted glow, often bright-

dull, perhaps friendly to touch and forgiving of fingerprints, but a

ened by an orange stain or thin yellow wash, appears to lie within the

dim foil to gleaming white plaster. Closer inspection, however, espe-

grainy woodwork itself, an impression deepened by the shadow-lined

cially for the moving eye, reveals a gentle sheen that waxes and wanes

facets of multiple panels.

Left. Yellow-Washed Pine Cupboards in Sisters’ Attic Church Family Dwelling House Canterbury, New Hampshire

64

Facing. Orange-Stained Cupboards of Dining Room Church Family Dwelling House Hancock, Massachusetts

ClasPed light Rare curves interrupting the rigid straight lines of Shaker architecture tend to curl around, and caress, the illumination that fills them. From the vaulted side entries at Pleasant Hill, to the sinuous banister of

Facing. Passage to Retiring Room Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

Canterbury’s schoolhouse, these soft, almost sensuous cavities stand out and gleam against the shade of central halls.

Left. Side Entry Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

66

Upper Staircase Schoolhouse Canterbury, New Hampshire

Lower Staircase Schoolhouse Canterbury, New Hampshire

69

attiC dor Mer The most commonplace yet varied source of natural light in a Shaker

added presence by the attic’s overall vacancy and plainness, the dor-

attic is the dormer window. In addition to brightening the shade be-

mer induces the human eye to perceive it as a container of light, whose

neath a roof, this spatial cell is imbued with its own light, and inserts

radiant shape derives from angled reveals as well as its location rela-

into the material building a volume of immaterial energy. Gaining

tive to floor or ceiling, whose plane becomes an extension of light. Left. Ministry Room Dormer Meetinghouse Hancock, Massachusetts

70

Facing. Attic Dormer under North Eaves Church Family Dwelling House Canterbury, New Hampshire

Facing. Central Dormer at Front of Attic Center Family Dwelling House South Union, Kentucky

Above. Attic Dormer along Floor Center Family Dwelling House South Union, Kentucky

73

CuPola The skylights of Pleasant Hill’s Center dwelling and trustees’ office

livered immediately, but is first canalized through a series of reflec-

open to sky through dormers set perpendicular to the ridgeline. What

tions that diminish its intensity, and vary both its quality and route.

result are lanterns that are recessed and extend above their ceilings,

While the luminous cavity hovering over the dwelling attic is poly-

into which light arrives from two directions, whereupon it is mixed

gonal in shape with a simple vault, the void above the trustees’ office

before being gently diffused to spaces below. Daylight is thus not de-

is a sinuous oval that emulates the sphere of the sky. Left. Attic Dormer-Skylight Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

74

Facing. Oval Cupola of Attic Trustees’ Office Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

Transom over Dining Room Doors Church Family Dwelling House Hancock, Massachusetts

4

equality• Shared

light

tr ansoM WindoW Transom windows, frequently placed by Shakers above inner as well as outer doors, provide a means to increase the light shared between neighboring rooms, and maintain this flow even when doors are fully

Facing. Arched Transom over Infirmary Door Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

closed. Interior transoms are typically set over doors connecting dark corridors and well-lit perimeter rooms, and take shapes ranging from multi-paned rectangles to arched or semicircular fanlights.

Left. Fanlight between Kitchen and Dining Room Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

78

interior WindoW The stretching of light, and the open feeling, afforded by an interior window are especially impressive when able to transform an utterly mundane space, such as a back stair or closet. An ingenious device to

Facing. Window between Kitchen Stair and Dining Room Church Family Dwelling House Hancock, Massachusetts

siphon daylight deeply into a building, this glazed opening serves also to share illumination between rooms demanding acoustic separation, so as to spread light in a peaceful way, free of disrupting noise.

Left. Dining Room Window onto Kitchen Stair Church Family Dwelling House Hancock, Massachusetts

80

Window onto Landing of Stair Spin Shop Canterbury, New Hampshire

Closet Window Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

douBle WindoW By guiding a portion of daylight directly across an intervening space, the double window illuminates two different rooms at once, ordinarily a perimeter stair and a room further inside. Surprising views to the

Facing. Double Window over Ministry Stair, with Elders’ Room at Left Meetinghouse Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

outside, as well as into the stair between, are thus opened through a normally closed dividing wall.

Left. Elders’ Room with View over Staircase Meetinghouse Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

84

enFilade oF oPenings The continuous channels of light and view carved through the mass of a Shaker building depend upon a precise alignment of corridors and doors with exterior windows. Like X-rays piercing solid matter,

Facing. Central Hallway Church Family Dwelling House Hancock, Massachusetts

these lines of energy intersect one another to form a grid of routes for flowing light.

Left. Transverse Passage across Central Hall Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

86

88

Second-Floor Hall Center Family Dwelling House South Union, Kentucky

Ministry Rooms with Six Consecutive Openings Meetinghouse Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

89

l attiCe oF light Vertical and horizontal streams of energy interflow in the vicinity of stairs, where differently colored intensities of light, from skylights and windows, are shared and mixed after arriving from many directions.

Lower Attic Church Family Dwelling House Hancock, Massachusetts

90

Facing. Second-Floor Hall and Twin Stairs Center Family Dwelling House South Union, Kentucky

Below. Second-Floor Corridor Sisters’ Dairy and Weave Shop (1795, remodeled 1820) Hancock, Massachusetts

Ministry Hall Meetinghouse Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

5

time• cyclic

light

shadoW Play on liMestone Pleasant Hill’s limestone dwellings are extremely responsive to shifting skies. Displayed upon their white volumes are all of the sun’s refracted colors, including faint hues often missed by the human eye. With its walls aligned to the cardinal points, each building behaves as a gnomon, registering and showing the flow of shade from plane to plane, as well as at the microscale of masonry texture, produced on the Center dwelling by raised white mortar.

Grazing Sun on East Façade at Noon Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

94

View from Southeast at Dawn Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

sPeCtr al Color s The absolute white of a Shaker meetinghouse, as prescribed by the

new emanation of sun. Melting the sky into walls are delicate tones

Millennial Laws, gave each village a spiritual center of maximum pu-

of colored light, ranging from the soft grays of overcast weather and

rity and radiance. But maximized also on the plain and highly reflec-

starched whites of clear days, to the transparent yellows and violets

tive clapboards was a visibility of each passing moment, and each

arriving early and late, and deeper blues and oranges of twilight.

View from Northwest at Sunrise Meetinghouse Sabbathday Lake, Maine

96

West Wall at Sunset Meetinghouse Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

tree shadoWs Dappled shadows cast onto walls from neighboring trees turn notice-

relative thinness or density. Revealed as well by swaying shadows is

ably bold, and cinematic, on a perfectly white meetinghouse. As if

the presence of wind, painting walls with a fluttery time that derives

thrown onto a blank projection screen, shadows tell of the slant of sun

from the sky but whose tempo is not the same as the sun.

and weather conditions, but also convey the time of season by their

Afternoon Shadows on West Façade Meetinghouse Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

98

Morning Shadows on East Façade Meetinghouse Sabbathday Lake, Maine

sPlashes oF sun When a low, and almost horizontal, beam of sun penetrates into a

ergy appears to the eye as a luminous figure, and constitutes a meta-

shadowy room, at daybreak or sundown, its patch of light takes on a

physical reality that is more real at that moment, and throbbing with

spellbinding presence, as does its slow progression around the walls.

life, than anything around it.

Set against empty planes and placid space, the concentration of en-

Left. Bar of Setting Sun on Entry Door Meetinghouse Sabbathday Lake, Maine

100

Facing. Dawn Sunbeam and Window Refractions in Ministry Staircase Meetinghouse Sabbathday Lake, Maine

Bent Streak of Sun in Ministry Hall Meetinghouse Sabbathday Lake, Maine

Refracted Sun in Meetingroom Meetinghouse Sabbathday Lake, Maine

Coexisting tiMe states Adjoining white rooms with contrasting window orientations foster a multiplicity of time states. Windows might illuminate one space with warm sun, while its neighbor is coolly washed with violet sky,

Facing. Afternoon View from One Elder’s Room to Another Meetinghouse Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

or cast bluish-green by light filtered through trees, making the different moments of waxing and waning energy simultaneously visible. These celestial hues grow in presence, as they are mutually intensified in the human eye through simultaneous and successive contrast, making yellows appear yellower and violets more violet than they actually are.

Left. Dawn View into Meetingroom from Side Entry Meetinghouse Sabbathday Lake, Maine

104

Facing. Morning View from East to West Ministry Rooms Meetinghouse Sabbathday Lake, Maine

Above. Passage to Meetingroom Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky 107

golden Cast Dispersions of sun off highly reflective and warm-colored floors can

to the floor’s mirror-like finish, bright spots ricochet onto ceilings to

completely transform a simple white room. The faintly yellow rays

double the brilliance. As this golden light reaches into every corner,

become further tinted when bouncing off floorboards of unpainted

the room is bathed in an ambient hue that Shakers identified with

pine, or coatings of paint that are reddish-yellow or yellowish-red. At

heaven.

the same time, enigmatic rising shadows are cast from below and, due

Left. Ministry Corridor at Sunset Meetinghouse Sabbathday Lake, Maine

108

Facing. Ministry Hall at Midday Meetinghouse Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

Below. Dining Room at Dawn Church Family Dwelling House Hancock, Massachusetts

110

Facing. Meetingroom in Early Morning Meetinghouse Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

Left. Yellow Reflections on Yellow Woodwork Sisters’ Shop (1816) Canterbury, New Hampshire

Facing. Central Hall in Early Morning Sisters’ Shop (1821) Sabbathday Lake, Maine

revolving light & Color The space of a Shaker meetinghouse is described, in a Sister’s diary in

framing successive moments in the solar course, the meetingroom

1837, “as if the windows of heaven were open and showers of blessings

creates a greater world of space, and, in doing so, makes an unintend-

descended upon us, yea more than we had room to receive.” One can

ed but telling analogy with ancient circles of stones linked to the sky,

almost follow these showers with a human eye, tracking the revolu-

such as Stonehenge in Britain, or the Medicine Wheels of American

tion of sun, as its slanting rays glide over objects, and alter hue, in

Plains Indians.

a continuous circuit from dawn to dusk. With its ring of windows,

Left. Meetingroom at Dawn Meetinghouse Sabbathday Lake, Maine

114

Facing. Meetingroom at Sunset Meetinghouse Sabbathday Lake, Maine

CrossFire oF sun i The north–south axis typical of a Shaker dwelling, its windows and

cloud of golden light. Most rays, however, are caught in rooms lining

rooms packed along east and west sides, makes the interior highly

the central hall, whose hidden brilliance is only revealed when doors

receptive to low sunshine. At daybreak and sundown in Hancock’s

are swung open, to produce, especially along the first floor, long enfi-

Church dwelling, illumination soars across the central hall at its

lades of colored light.

midpoint, brightening side entries and stairs, and coalescing in a soft

Left. Early Morning View through Brethren’s Rooms Church Family Dwelling House Hancock, Massachusetts

116

Facing. Early Morning View Looking North from Brethren’s Side Entry Church Family Dwelling House Hancock, Massachusetts

Second-Floor Hallway at Dawn Church Family Dwelling House Hancock, Massachusetts

CrossFire oF sun ii

120

Hollowed through its entire width with east–west channels for light

the bluish shade in a series of parallel bands. After gently spraying the

to flow, Pleasant Hill’s Center dwelling is combed through with sun-

walls at first light, these rays slowly withdraw and begin to sharpen

beams at dawn and sunset. Golden rays, from windows and transoms,

as the sun rises, an epiphany that repeats in reverse as the sun goes

travel from side to side across the main hall, piercing and warming

down.

Facing. Dawn in Central Hallway Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

Below. Early Sunset in Central Hallway Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

Sunset in Central Hallway Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

Last Sun in Central Hallway Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

light orChestr ation

124

The crowning achievement of evanescent Shaker light is the meeting-

and absolutely still, through the long middle portion of the day. A few

room built by Micajah Burnett on the second floor of Pleasant Hill’s

angled sunbeams arrive in midmorning and mid-afternoon, and the

Center dwelling. Set high on its elevated site, with a vaulted ceiling

rays bounce off a mirror-like floor to dapple the whiteness. But early

that evokes the heavens, and four large windows to east and west,

and late, the unadorned void is entirely transfigured by low rays of

this undivided space, where members once gathered for meetings and

golden light. Arriving in sheaves, sunlight stretches over the room and

worship, forms an ideal vessel to collect and display the shifting ef-

bends up the wall, only to curve back along the ceiling, enveloping

fects of Kentucky skies. Dramatically framed by narrow corridors en-

space with bands of gold, and filling the room with a dense, almost

tering from north and south, the meetingroom remains pure white,

tangible, and spiritual, energy.

Facing. First Light of Sunrise in Meetingroom Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

Above. Mid Sunrise in Meetingroom Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

Late Sunrise in Meetingroom Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

Facing. Late Sunrise in Meetingroom Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

Above. Late Morning in Meetingroom Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

127

Midday in Meetingroom Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

Late Afternoon in Meetingroom Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

129

Facing. Sunset in Meetingroom Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

Left. Last Sun in Meetingroom Center Family Dwelling House Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

Side Entrance Meetinghouse Sabbathday Lake, Maine

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Hayden, Dolores. Seven American Utopias: The Architecture of Communitarian Socialism, 1790–1975. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1976. Horgan, Edward R. The Shaker Holy Land: A Community Portrait. Harvard, Mass.: Harvard Common Press, 1982. Kirk, John T. The Shaker World: Art, Life, Belief. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997. Lancaster, Clay. Pleasant Hill: Shaker Canaan in Kentucky: An Architectural and Social Study. Salvisa, Ky.: Warwick Publications, 2001. Lane, Belden C. Landscapes of the Sacred: Geography and Narrative in American Spirituality. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988. Lassiter, William Lawrence. Shaker Architecture. New York: Vantage, 1966. Mace, Aurelia G. The Aletheia: Spirit of Truth. Farmington, Me.: Knowlton & McLeary, 1907. The Manifesto. Vols. I–XXIX. January 1, 1871–December 1899. The United Society. [also Henry C. Blinn, ed., The Manifesto, 1883–1899; Frederick W. Evans and Antoinette Doolittle, eds., Shaker and Shakeress Monthly, 1873–1875; George A. Lomas, ed., The Shaker, 1871–1872; Lomas, The Shaker, 1876–1877; and Lomas, The Shaker Manifesto, 1878–1882] Melcher, Marguerite Fellows. The Shaker Adventure. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1941. Merton, Thomas. Seeking Paradise: The Spirit of the Shakers. Ed. Paul M. Pearson. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2003. Neal, Julia. The Kentucky Shakers. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1977. Nicoletta, Julie. The Architecture of the Shakers. New York: Norfleet, 1995. Otto, Christian F. Space into Light. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1980. Otto, Rudolf. The Idea of the Holy. Trans. John W. Harvey. London: Oxford University Press, 1923.

Peladeau, Marius B. “Shaker Meetinghouses of Moses Johnson.” Antiques 98 (Oct. 1970): 594–99. Picard, Max. The World of Silence. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1952. Plato. Collected Dialogues. Ed. E. Hamilton and H. Cairns. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961. Plummer, Henry. The Architecture of Natural Light. London: Thames & Hudson, 2009. ———. Light in Japanese Architecture. Tokyo: A&U, 1995. ———. Masters of Light: First Volume, Twentieth-Century Pioneers. Tokyo: A&U, 2003. ———. Poetics of Light. Tokyo: A&U, 1987. Rocheleau, Paul, and June Sprigg. Shaker Built: The Form and Function of Shaker Architecture. New York: Monacelli, 1994. Sears, Clara Endicott. Gleanings from Old Shaker Journals. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1916. Simson, Otto von. The Gothic Cathedral. New York: Bollingen Foundation, 1956. Sprigg, June. By Shaker Hands. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975. Sprigg, June, and David Larkin. Shaker: Life, Work, and Art. New York: Smithmark, 2000.

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Stechler, Amy, Ken Burns, Langdon Clay, and Jerome Liebling. The Shakers: Hands to Work, Hearts to God: The History and Visions of the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing from 1774 to the Present. New York: Portland House, 1990. Stein, Stephen J., ed. Letters from a Young Shaker: William S. Byrd at Pleasant Hill. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1985. Swank, Scott T. Shaker Life, Art, and Architecture: Hands to Work, Hearts to God. New York: Abbeville, 1999. Thomas, James C. “Micajah Burnett and the Buildings at Pleasant Hill.” Antiques 98 (Oct. 1970): 600–605. Wergland, Glendyne R. One Shaker Life: Isaac Newton Youngs, 1793–1865. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006. Whitson, Robley Edward, ed. Shaker Theological Sources. Bethlehem, Conn.: United Institute, 1969. ———. The Shakers: Two Centuries of Spiritual Reflection. New York: Paulist Press, 1983. Whitworth, John McKelvie. God’s Blueprints: A Sociological Study of Three Utopian Sects. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975. Williams, Stephen Guion. A Place in Time: The Shakers at Sabbathday Lake, Maine. Boston: David R. Godine, 2006.

Henry Plummer is an architect and photographer, and currently Professor of Architecture at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, where he is also an associate of the Center for Advanced Study. Among his books are Poetics of Light, Light in Japanese Architecture, and The Architecture of Natural Light.