ABSTRACT
The U.S. landscape has always been home to a broad spectrum of intentional communities. Such has been the practice of the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, or “Shakers,” whose communities were established in early America as deliberately separate spheres where social and spiritual practices could be managed and sustained by distinctive patterns of architecture and land use. In many cases, Shaker sites have been adapted for use by later institutions that also required strict spatial separation from surrounding communities. This chapter surveys Shaker sites later transformed by institutions sharing similar spatial needs of separation, land use, and collective housing – specifically those sites that were transformed into prisons and other spaces of incarceration and compulsory residence.
