Page 17 - C.A.L.L. #43 - Winter 2017

In 1940, the Henkens had seen Wright’s models for Usonian homes and Broadacre City at the Museum
of Modern Art, and promptly uprooted their life and moved to Taliesin, where David Henken joined
Wright’s fellowship program. When David completed his training, he and Priscilla moved back to New
York, and, with David’s sister and brother-in-law and a small group of friends, launched an all-
encompassing, years-long campaign to get their community off the ground. They decided to name it
Usonia in honor of Wright, who signed on to design the master plan and some of the houses himself.
It was the early 1940s, and, coming out of the financial distress of the Depression, cooperatives were
hugely popular. Some of the early informational meetings about Usonia drew hundreds. But for the core
group, the appeal was far more than economic. They felt that cooperative living “could help create a
more just society,” wrote Roland Reisley, an early member, in his book Usonia, New York: Building a
Community with Frank Lloyd Wright. Two Usonians who were psychologists drew up a questionnaire to
assess whether prospective members fit in well with the group’s ideals. Could potential members
imagine living with an Active Musician? Trotskyite? Pacifist? Chicken Raiser? They had dreams of creating
a racially diverse, integrated community, and hoped a black family would join Usonia. But they stopped
short of actively recruiting families of color, believing the community’s self-presentation as a group of
people interested in diversity would speak for itself. (It took decades before a black family joined the
community.)

The founders wanted to
combine Wright’s concepts of
affordable home ownership and
organic architecture with
classical cooperative ideals like
democratic governance and
joint ownership of resources.
Hammering out the details took
years. Co-op meetings “were
loud, they were endless, they
sometimes were pointless, and I
can’t say nobody’s feelings got
hurt,” one early Usonian told
Reisley. “But they were
invigorating, and everybody
Photo: Ashley Gates took part.” Over time, the group
came up with a series of legally
binding covenants which
members would agree to when they joined Usonia. They governed things like architectural style (all
building designs must be approved by the whole group), communality (no property delineations were
allowed), and political neutrality. The covenants could only be amended by a unanimous vote.

The Usonians bought 97 acres of land in Westchester in 1947 and broke ground on the first houses a
few years later. Each weekend, members took the train from the city to help clear land and assist in
construction to try and keep costs down. Hope Sobie, who was a small child when her parents joined
Usonia in the early 1950s, remembers watching her father chase after the bulldozer that was clearing
their parcel to make sure the driver didn’t take down any more trees than was absolutely necessary.

By the time Sobie’s family moved in, there were already a handful of families living in Usonia. The day
they arrived, Sobie remembers, “we just bopped in to all the houses and we met ’em all. Anyone you'd
meet would be friendly, sharing things.”

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