Community

Jacob Glover, PhD, Director of Public Programs and Education

“…Shrieks and yells followed in alternate succession, till by their violence, and the incessant fury of their dancing, the worshippers were exhausted.”

– “The Shakers,” Richmond Inquirer, May 27, 1825

When we last left off our story of the Meeting House, we had brought the narrative up through construction. Today we are turning our focus from the physical structure of the building to how the Shakers and others have utilized the space over time.

As with all Shaker architecture, the Meeting House was built for a purpose. In this case, the iconic, open first floor was built to allow the Shakers to worship as a community in their distinctive frenzied, physical manner. Like many observers, the author of the quote that opens this post was impressed, appalled, and amazed all at once when witnessing the fury of Shaker worship. Anyone who has stood in the interior of the first floor and listened to a Shaker music program or joined with others to sing in the space should have an easy appreciation for the noise and reverberations that several hundred Shakers could generate!

For nearly the first 80 years of its existence, the Pleasant Hill Meeting House remained in Shaker hands. Although Shaker worship was often open to the public, that wasn’t always the case and at times the Shakers chose to close their sacred experiences to outsiders.

While the notoriety and fame of Shaker worship has spread far and wide, the truth is that the intensity of movement and dance during meetings waned over the course of the 19^thcentury as the population aged and Shaker practices evolved. In fact, by the late 1800s the Pleasant Hill Shakers had largely stopped dancing at all during worship. Often, the families even chose to worship on Sundays in their own dwellings.

Despite these changes, the Meeting House remained the physical and spiritual center of the Shaker community until the dawn of the 20^thcentury. In order to cover mounting debts and some bad investments Pleasant Hill sold the Meeting House, along with several other buildings and a sizeable portion of land, in the late 1890s. While the building sat vacant for most of the next decade, occasionally local youth utilized the space as a dance hall. The “Shakertown Hop” was supposedly all the rage!

Throughout the early decades of the 20^thcentury the Meeting House again sat vacant or was used as storage, and at some point physical alterations were made to the exterior of the building in order to use it as a garage.

In November 1948 the Meeting House returned to more familiar roots as a large revival was held in the building with permission from the owner. By 1952, Shakertown Baptist Church had been officially organized and until the mid-1960s the Shaker Meeting House served as a Baptist church.

Of course, most visitors to this blog will know the major outline of the story from this point. Beginning in the 1960s, the non-profit institution Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill started purchasing land and buildings at Pleasant Hill in order to restore the village to its mid-19^thcentury appearance. After its purchase and the relocation of Shakertown Baptist Church to a new building nearby, the Meeting House has been one of the most important historical and interpretive elements in sharing the legacy of the Pleasant Hill Shakers.

Today, the Meeting House is used in many ways! In addition to daily programs and a number of special events throughout the year that highlight the unique architecture and intricacies of Shaker Worship, the Meeting House also hosts private events, dinners and more. 

Thanks to recent preservation efforts, we’re hopeful that the first 200 years for the Meeting House is only the beginning – and what a first 200 it has been!

Jacob A. Glover, PhD, Director of Public Programs and Education

“…The brethren started into the woods, about 3 ½ miles off, to cut timber for this [Meeting] House, the 3^rd of January, 1820 and pronounced it done, the last of next October, which was 10 months in building, lacking 2 days.”

– Pleasant Hill Ministry to New Lebanon Ministry, March 1821

Here at Pleasant Hill we are accustomed to milestones and celebrations, but there’s something extra special in the air this October as we celebrate the 200^th birthday of our beloved Meeting House! Both the physical and spiritual center of Pleasant Hill, the 1820 Meeting House has remained a marvel of Shaker architecture and an inspirational place of community-building since its completion.

As the passage that opens this post reveals, the Pleasant Hill Shakers constructed the 1820 Meeting House in a fairly short amount of time. From gathering materials and resources in January to worshipping in the space by November – it was quite the feat! Digging into this timeline a bit deeper, we can uncover some fascinating tidbits about the Pleasant Hill community, and the wider Shaker world, during this time.

First, we should note that this was the second Meeting House the Shakers built at Pleasant Hill. The first Meeting House was a stone building that stood just to the south of the Old Ministry’s Shop in what is now an open patch of lawn. Damaged by earthquakes in 1811 and 1812, by 1820 further use of this smaller space for worship was untenable.

In any case, Pleasant Hill had also decided to reorient the center of their community to where the Centre Family Dwelling and 1820 Meeting House now stand. The frenzied 10-month build, therefore, was much more than mere physical labor – it quite literally transformed how Pleasant Hill conceptualized and understood their community for the rest of its existence.

In relation to the wider Shaker world, the 1820 Meeting House at Pleasant Hill was one of four meeting houses built by western Shaker communities around this time that all shared similar characteristics and dimensions. At Union Village in Ohio, the Shakers constructed an almost identical 44’ x 60’ building in 1818 in which the second floor and roof were supported by a bridge truss in the attic. In 1819, the South Union Shakers built their meeting house, and White Water (another Ohio village) completed their similar building in 1827.

The similarities in construction and use reveal how connected the different Shaker communities were, and that ideas and information were shared amongst all for the betterment of each community. The unique history of each of these buildings in the intervening years, however, provides perspective and an appreciation for everything that has been done to preserve and protect the 1820 Meeting House at Pleasant Hill over the last 200 years.

As we move through October we will return to the Meeting House in several blog posts and begin to uncover some of these stories of community use, transformation, preservation, and inspiration that have transpired inside this amazing structure!

Laura Webb, Program Specialist

Hello again, folks! We’re now halfway through our NEH grant timeline. I’m approaching the home stretch of object editing, and will soon begin photographing select items. In the meantime, let’s chat about artifact conservation!

In going through object entries in PastPerfect, I have also been checking our maintenance and conservation notes entered into the system from past conservator reports. Early on in this project, one word in these notes caught my eye: “saliva.” At first, I thought this must be some sort of typo. Then, after finding several more examples, I wondered if it was a faithful documentation of a (surely!) outdated practice. After all, artifact conservation techniques have certainly changed a lot over history. Out of insatiable curiosity, I dug a little deeper.

I found out that cleaning artifacts with human saliva—known colloquially as a “spit shine,” and scientifically (albeit euphemistically) as “enzymatic cleaning”[1]—is a conservation technique that has been used for centuries.[2] However, it also (surprisingly enough) has scientific backing! A 1990 Portuguese study confirmed that the amylase enzyme contained in human saliva makes it, for many delicate surfaces, a more effective cleaning agent than water, while still being gentle enough to use on sensitive materials.[3] The authors won the 2018 chemistry “Ig Nobel” prize for unusual achievements in scientific research for their study.[4] It has also been investigated for use on silver gelatin photographic prints—although with mixed results, and further study needed.[5]

As y’all might imagine, the Covid-19 pandemic has caused this practice to be put on hold in some institutions, while others are putting it under closer scrutiny and modifying their procedures to increase sanitation.[6] Synthetic solutions that imitate saliva have also been tested, and appear to be just as effective, but of course are more expensive than…well, than fluids humans naturally produce anyway.

Regardless of what future studies determine, we can understand how important it is to document all past conservation treatments on an artifact! Have you ever seen old glue turn yellow on something? Yep, that’s not what we want. Our standards, knowledge, and available materials change over time, and sometimes it is necessary to undo past work for the longevity of an object.

While past conservators at Pleasant Hill have used this technique, I could not find a record of it being used since the mid-1990s, and none of these items are currently on display—so you don’t need to worry about our current exhibits! In general, though, perhaps…don’t lick the artifacts.

Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill was awarded a CARES grant through The National Endowment for the Humanities in June 2020. Funding from this grant award supported two activities to enhance digital humanities initiatives at SVPH, including Laura Webb’s work to review our collection records and prepare them for publishing in a public digital database.

[1] Allison Rosenthal, “Spit Cleaning: Conservation’s Dirty Little Secret” (Buffalo Bill Center of the West, July 9, 2015), accessed September 18, 2020, https://centerofthewest.org/2015/07/06/spit-cleaning-conservations-dirty-little-secret/.

[2] Steven Litt, “Little-Known Art-Cleaning Technique Nothing to Spit At,” The Seattle Times (The Seattle Times Company, April 7, 2002), accessed September 18, 2020, https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=20020407.

[3] Paula M. S. Romão, Adília M. Alarcão, and César A. N. Viana, “Human Saliva as a Cleaning Agent for Dirty Surfaces,” Studies in Conservation 35, no. 3 (August 1990): pp. 153-155, accessed September 18, 2020, https://doi.org/10.2307/1506167.

[4] Emma Stoye, “Art Conservation Using Saliva Wins Chemistry Ig Nobel,” Chemistry World, September 14, 2018, accessed September 18, 2020, https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/art-conservation-using-saliva-wins-chemistry-ig-nobel/3009504.article.

[5] Ruth Oliver, “May I Spit on Your Photograph? A Preliminary Investigation into the Effectiveness of Saliva and a Synthetic Alternative for Surface Cleaning Silver Gelatin Photographs,” in 4th Book, Paper & Photographs Symposium, 2006, pp. 174-193.

[6] Luke Wong, “Coronavirus Puts Damper on Saliva Cleaning Method in Art Galleries and Museums,” ABC News (ABC Central West, June 27, 2020), accessed September 18, 2020, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-28/saliva-spit-cleaning-art-gallery-museum-conservator-pandemic/12398824.