- Zachariah Allen, The Practical Tourist, 1835
One of the Valley’s most creative mill village designers was Zachariah Allen. To Allen, a mill village was not merely an investment, but an opportunity to experiment with his many theories, including those of community development. During his time there was a spirited debate between those who supported the growth of manufacturing, and those who defended America’s traditional agrarian ways and did not want to see the replication of industrial slums on this side of the Atlantic.
Allen did not believe that industrialization necessarily had to lead to squalid conditions, or to the creation of an oppressed working class. His solution to this conflict was the development of small mill villages “sprinkled among the glens and meadows of solitary watercourses.” In these hamlets, the mill owners would be duty bound to promote the social welfare of their workers, who in turn would be happily dedicated to their tasks and to the company’s growing profits.
Unlike most social theorist, Zachariah Allen had the opportunity to put his ideal to a practical test. At Georgiaville, Allen added neoclassical flairs to his expanded mill and new boarding houses. Shade trees were planted along Georgiaville’s streets, and a new chapel and school were built. He built a park for his workers along the millpond and even today Georgiaville pond is a popular recreation.
The Georgiaville Mill ceased textile manufacturing in the 1930s, and in recent decades the surrounding countryside has become suburbanized, but the core of Georgiaville maintains many of the elements that Zachariah Allen built. One massive change is that the Georgiaville mill has now been converted into condominiums, an innovation that Zachariah Allen surely would have appreciated.
