The story of Historic New Harmony as a University of Southern Indiana program involves the question: How do you preserve the story of a place like New Harmony without treating its history as something static and finished?
New Harmony was — and is — a living town with a complicated, layered history. The Harmonists built it. The Owenites transformed it. Generations since have lived here, preserved it and debated about what it all means. Jane Blaffer Owen's vision and generosity in the mid-20th century changed New Harmony's preservation landscape, making possible much of what exists today. Historic New Harmony, Inc., formed in 1974 with support from the Lilly Endowment, acquired and restored significant properties and laid the groundwork for what would become USI's involvement. By 1985, when Historic New Harmony, Inc. became a division of USI, the challenge wasn't only keeping the buildings standing. It was figuring out how to keep alive and share New Harmony's history while the town continued to live and evolve.
New Harmony's historical significance was formally recognized in 1965 when the United States Department of the Interior designated the town as a National Historic Landmark District. This recognition acknowledged what people here already knew: that the Harmonist and Owenite experiments had shaped American education, science and social reform in lasting ways.
But recognition didn't solve the practical challenges of preservation. In 1973, the Indiana State Legislature established a second New Harmony Memorial Commission to bring statewide assistance for the town's preservation and development. Before the end of that year, the town raised its share of a state-federal planning grant and adopted zoning. Private investors restored a five-building commercial block. The work of balancing preservation with community vitality had begun in earnest.
Between 1974 and 1980, the Lilly Endowment provided a generous grant to Historic New Harmony, Inc., a private not-for-profit organization, permitting acquisition and restoration of significant properties. The town of New Harmony received the Award of Merit from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for its planning and management efforts. Non-historic buildings were moved to new locations, permitting their continued commercial and residential use. Historic buildings were relocated to an area of prime historic significance, in many cases to their original sites and in other cases, to replace those with similar characteristics.
The town also gained additional recognition during this period. In 1982, the United States Department of the Interior, in cooperation with the Federal Interagency Panel for World Heritage, placed New Harmony on the Indicative Inventory of Potential Future U.S. World Heritage Site nominations. In 1997, the American Institute of Certified Planners designated New Harmony as a National Planning Landmark.
In 1985, Historic New Harmony, Inc. became a division of the University of Southern Indiana, promoting cultural and educational programs and continuing the maintenance and preservation of its properties. This wasn't a takeover, but a partnership that brought university resources to support preservation while creating opportunities for students, researchers and the public to engage with New Harmony's history.
The idea from the beginning was to create a living laboratory where students and teachers, visitors and scholars, residents and researchers could come together to experience history, explore ideas and create new understanding. The university's involvement expanded what was possible, from collections care to educational programming to research support.
In 1991, Historic New Harmony combined resources with the New Harmony State Historic Site to become a "unified program" of the University of Southern Indiana and the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites. The New Harmony Memorial Commission, with membership appointed by the governor, oversaw the activities of the Unified Program. This collaboration brought together different organizations working toward shared preservation goals. In 2023, the Unified Program was discontinued to streamline operations and allow each organization to focus on their respective missions.
Other partnerships developed during this period as well. The Rapp Granary/Owen Foundation, incorporated in 1995 as a private not-for-profit, completed reconstruction of the Rapp-Owen Granary in 1999. That same year, Historic New Harmony received a grant from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources to prepare a district nomination for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.
Today, Historic New Harmony manages historic sites throughout New Harmony's National Historic Landmark district, cares for collections documenting the town's history from 1814 to the present, develops educational programs for audiences ranging from elementary students to academic scholars and collaborates with partners in the local community and beyond.
We've undertaken a major digitization initiative to make our collections accessible to researchers worldwide. We welcome thousands of visitors annually for tours, programs and events. We provide internships and research opportunities for USI students and faculty. And we continue working with community partners including the New Harmony State Historic Site, New Harmony Working Men's Institute Museum & Library, local organizations and foundations to preserve New Harmony's heritage while supporting its future as a living community.
The program has evolved significantly since 1985, but the core vision remains: to preserve New Harmony's history, make it accessible and help people explore what it means.
Historic New Harmony continues to evolve, and recent support from the Lilly Endowment has opened significant new possibilities. In 2023, we received more than $2 million through Lilly Endowment's Religion and Cultural Institutions Initiative to strengthen how we interpret and share the religious and spiritual dimensions of New Harmony's history. That work includes renovating two historic buildings (creating permanent exhibition space and a community learning center), developing new exhibitions about the religious beliefs that shaped the Harmonist and Owenite communities and launching an interfaith festival.
In 2025, Lilly Endowment awarded Historic New Harmony an additional $2.5 million to build on that work over the next five years. This funding will help us develop a master interpretive plan, redesign tour programs, produce documentary films, create new K-12 educational programming, enhance amenities for visitors and school groups, improve Church Park's landscaping and interpretive features, implement the Maclure Square Public Art Program, advance collections development, launch a Community Collections Digitization Program and continue the interfaith festival.
These initiatives expand our capacity to share New Harmony's stories more fully, including the central role that religious freedom, spiritual seeking and belief systems have played in the community. They also help us serve multiple audiences better: students exploring primary sources, researchers accessing digitized collections, visitors experiencing improved tours and exhibitions and residents participating in community programs.
Beyond these specific projects, we're continuing to explore partnerships, support student and faculty research and find ways to connect New Harmony's history with contemporary questions about community, belief and social change.
The experiments that happened here didn't end in 1827. They're still raising questions worth asking. Our job is to preserve that history and keep those questions going.
Donald E. Pitzer and Connie A. Weinzapfel, "Utopia on the Wabash: The History of Preservation in New Harmony," Internet Archive Wayback Machine, CRM Journal, 2001, https://web.archive.org/web/20030322012038/http://crm.cr.nps.gov/archive/24-09/24-09-7.pdf.
"Historic New Harmony Awarded Over $2 Million Through Lilly Endowment Initiative," University of Southern Indiana, May 8, 2023, https://www.usi.edu/news/releases/2023/05/historic-new-harmony-awarded-over-2-million-through-lilly-endowment-initiative.
Photographer once known, Historic New Harmony Tour, 1988, photograph, Historic New Harmony Slide Collection, University of Southern Indiana Archives and Special Collections, https://library.usi.edu/record/1572441?ln=en&p=Historic+New+Harmony+tours&v=uv#?xywh=-710%2C0%2C5851%2C3029.
"USI Historic New Harmony Program Receives $2.5 Million Grant from Lilly Endowment Inc.," University of Southern Indiana, October 29, 2025, https://www.usi.edu/news/releases/2025/10/usi-historic-new-harmony-program-receives-25-million-grant-from-lilly-endowment-inc.