Built Environment at The Farm: A 1970s Tennessee Commune

Abstract

The Farm began with a professor named Stephen Gaskin in San Francisco, California. After attracting a large following from his Monday Night Class where he led spiritual gatherings, Gaskin led them to Lewis County, Tennessee, to pursue an experiment in living lightly with the earth. The establishment of The Farm as a commune lasted from 1971 to 1983, whereafter members decided to shift away from the communal experience. More than fifty years later, it continues to exist as an intentional community. How does the construction and built environment from the communal period at The Farm tie into the larger history of counter-cultural groups from the 1970s? The Farm relied on inexpensive, eco-friendly ways to build; how have these buildings adapted over time and what can their futures hold? In this thesis, I aim to answer these questions to place The Farm’s history and architecture in a larger context of hippie history. I emphasize the connectedness of the historic structures to their present-day operations as well as their relevancy to producing a nomination for the National Register of Historic Places.