Unitary Household

**The Unitary Household** was a cooperatively owned boardin ghouse near Union Square in New York City, run according to the principles of Equitable Commerce.26

 It could be said to be an urban take on the Fourierist phalanstery.

weekly bills.

## Establishment

### **Founding**

Established in 1858, first on on Stuyvesant Street and then moved to a group of four connected brownstones26 at 106 East 14th Street, near Union Square, in 1859.

### **Population**

The Unitary Household began with 20 residents, both individuals and families. By the time they moved to East 14th Street they numbered around 100 residents.

### **Notable Residents & Visitors**

The Unitary Household was visited by John Humphrey Noyes and Elder Frederick Evants of the New Lebanon, New York Shaker community,

Residents included Edward Underhill, Stephen Pearl Andrews and his wife, Marie Stevens Case Howland and her husband Lyman W. Case, Edmund Clarence Stedman (poet), Edward Howland (journalist).

## Community Structure

### Governance

There was to be no profit made by the household on rent, food, or service.

### **Facilities and Landscape**

Individuals and families lived in private suites and held parlors and dining rooms in common. Domestic tasks were not shared, but instead were controlled by one person, Edward Underhill, and his staff. Underhill said that 'his only goal for the Unitary Household was'

> "...to test the practicability of a cooperative household succeeding under individual membership, as contrasted with the majority rule of a joint stock association... if people could trust their persons in a public car, and their children in a public school, without fear of defilement, I could not see why they could not with equal safety trust themselves within a common parlor, partake of meals in a common dining-room and permit their children to use a common play-room."
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As per the philosophy of Individual Sovereignty, Andrews and Underhill insisted on having private spaces within their community. It was also one of the first such experiments done in an urban environment.
The New York Times, under the headline, "Practical Socialism in New York", reported that

> "On the first floor, there are two handsome parlors, lighted by gas, furnished with taste, adorned with pictures, and provided with such musical instruments as a harp, piano, and guitar. In the rear of the parlors is an extension, in which is the general dining-room. One table is set for all the inhabitants of four floors. Except at table, each family retains its own privacy. The necessary number of servants is provided..."
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He went on to praise the whole endevour,

> "The Free-Lovers... have invented a large programme, and .. some of them, at least, have begun to do what Mr. Charles Fourier, and the philosophers of Brook Farm after him, vainly attempted to accomplish -- unite different families, under a single system of regulations, live cheaply, and what is more curious than all the rest, indroduce into the heart of New York, without noise or bluster, a successful enterprise based on Practical Socialism."
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### Economy

#### **Finances**

One New York Times journalist reported that the Unitary Household had cut living costs by a third.

## Decline & Dissolution

### Dissolution

Despite The New York Times' glowing review of the Unitary Household Facilities just a few years before, by the time of the group's dissolution in 1860 the Times wrote that "if the morals of the house were bad, the physical discomfort was worse. In no way was the "unitary Household" a success, and in no way did it approach to economy or decency."  The worst of it, of course, was it's association with Free Love,

> "...founded as a theatre for the exercise of the pernicious and lustful passions which the doctrine of 'Free Love' engenders... [as a] practical application of the Free-Love doctrine it was more than successful; it was a positive triumph of Lust."
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## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Wunderlich, Roger. *Low Living and High Thinking at Modern Times, New York*. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1992.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Hayden, Dolores. The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Houses, Neighborhoods and Cities, 1981.
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Gaston, Paul M. *Women of Fair Hope*. NewSouth Books, 2012.
4. ↑ Underhill, Edward F. "The Unitary Household, Letter from Mr. Underhill in Reply to the Article in the Times," New York Times, September 26, 1860, 2. as quoted by Hayden, Dolores. The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Houses, Neighborhoods and Cities, 1981.
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Practical Socialism in New York," New York Times, June 22, 1858, 5. as quoted by Hayden, Dolores. The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Houses, Neighborhoods and Cities, 1981.
6. ↑ "Free Love: Expose of the Affairs of the Late 'Unitary Household,;" New York Times, September 21, 1860, as quoted by Hayden, Dolores. The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Houses, Neighborhoods and Cities, 1981.