In Harvard, this woman stopped by to ask us whether we were "library fanatics." When we confessed that we did indeed like libraries, she gave us a tour of the Harvard library. One older building (photo here), used as the public school for many years (the building was given on condition that the school would enroll equal numbers of boys and girls) and a beautiful, newer addition.
Harvard was the site of several utopian experiments. The second Shaker community in the U.S. was in Harvard. Louisa May Alcott's father founded a short-lived transendentalist, socialist utopian community called Fruitlands in Harvard. And a follower of Henry George started a "single tax" zone in Harvard. (George believed that the economic value derived from natural resources and natural opportunities should belong equally to all residents of a community, but that people own the value they create.)
The Fruitlands site later became home to another community founded by Joseph Palmer, who served a year in prison because he insisted on wearing a beard, an event immortalized on his tombstone.
