PARKS & RECREATION
Key Assets: Beaver County is genuinely home to OLD ECONOMY VILLAGE, a designated National Historic Landmark District in Ambridge preserving the third and final American settlement of the Harmony Society, a remarkable 19th-century German Christian communal and celibate religious society; founded in Germany by the Separatist preacher George Rapp, the Harmonists first emigrated to America in 1804, establishing communities in Butler County, PA and later New Harmony, Indiana, before returning to Pennsylvania in 1824 and purchasing 3,000 acres along the Ohio River, about 18 miles downriver from Pittsburgh, where they founded “Oekonomie” (Economy); members turned over all personal property to the Society upon joining and received in return everything needed to live simply and comfortably, working communally in agriculture and manufacturing – the Society became genuinely renowned worldwide for its piety and remarkable economic prosperity, producing cotton, wool, silk, lumber, and wine, and making shrewd investments in railroads, coal, and oil that built substantial collective wealth; the community’s museum, housed on the lower floor of one of its buildings, was among the first museums in western Pennsylvania, charging outside visitors 10 cents admission to view fine paintings, curiosities, and taxidermied animals; despite its prosperity, the Society’s strict celibacy requirement made recruiting new members increasingly difficult, and after decades of decline it was formally dissolved in 1905-1906, with much of its remaining real estate sold to the American Bridge Company, which enlarged the town and renamed it Ambridge in the Society’s honor; six acres of the original settlement, including 17 restored historic structures, gardens, and roughly 16,000 original artifacts, were acquired by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania beginning in 1916 and opened to the public as Old Economy Village in 1919, now administered by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
Notes: Old Economy Village’s genuine, extensively documented history as one of America’s most successful 19th-century utopian religious communities is a nationally significant landmark, recommended by many visitors as the single best historic site to see in Beaver County.