The most obvious legacies left by the Community of True Inspiration, the utopian society that founded the Amana Colonies in 1855, are the houses they built.Solid, boxy and simple, the architecture reflects the lives of the communal Pietists, whose rejection of rituals and formalities led them to separate from Lutheranism in the early 1700s and eventually to immigrate to western New York in the 1840s, and finally to Iowa the next decade.The houses are rectangular, most with 1-1/2 stories, gable roofs, trellises for grapevines an...
The most obvious legacies left by the Community of True Inspiration, the utopian society that founded the Amana Colonies in 1855, are the houses they built.
Solid, boxy and simple, the architecture reflects the lives of the communal Pietists, whose rejection of rituals and formalities led them to separate from Lutheranism in the early 1700s and eventually to immigrate to western New York in the 1840s, and finally to Iowa the next decade.
The houses are rectangular, most with 1-1/2 stories, gable roofs, trellises for grapevines and nine-over-six windows. Red brick, sandstone or dark clapboard exteriors give them a rustic look. Inside are center halls and plaster walls.
The seven villages combined — Amana, East Amana, Middle Amana, High Amana, West Amana, South Amana and Homestead — have about 1,600 residents. The whole complex, 20 miles northwest of Iowa City and 20 miles southwest of Cedar Rapids, is a national historic site.
Until the Great Depression, in 1932, the Amana Church held all property in common. Families lived in houses assigned to them depending on what they contributed to their community and where. Single woman lived with their parents. Single men lived in dorms. A large house near Amana Woolen Mill, for example, was home to mill workers.
Lanny Haldy, 54, was born in Middle Amana, 2 miles west of Amana, the son of Leonard and Lillian Haldy. He lives there still with his wife, Andrea, and sons, Ben, 13, and Zachary, 15.
"It's the house I grew up in. Now my kids are staying in the rooms I stayed in," said Haldy, director of the Amana Heritage Society.
The 2,000-square-foot-plus, wooden-clapboard-sided home was built in 1863, when Middle Amana was founded. He said the house, one of the first constructed, was home to the carpenters who built the rest of the village. His home demonstrates two generations of construction: The original house is made of rough-hewn timber from local forests; an addition in 1890 used dimensional lumber made possible by advancing technology.
Haldy said he and his family live in the house "by chance." It's where his parents lived during the "Great Change," the separation of the Amana Church from community finances and the end of communalism. Residents were given the first option to buy the house they happened to be living in, he said. It suits him.
The 19th-century homes of the Amana Colonies, when they go on the market, sell about as fast as any, Haldy said. But as his family experience suggests, the market — something the utopian founders eschewed and their descendants reluctantly embraced — isn't a particularly hot one.