Arden Facts by Russ McKinney

Arden Facts
by Russ McKinney (written circa 1992)

(Click here to see the map and directions on the Arden Club website)

Arden was founded in 1900 by sculptor Frank Stephens and architect Will Price. They were part of the Arts and Crafts Movement in Philadelphia. Financial support for the project came from the soap-manufacturer Henry Fels. It began as a summer camp, laid-out on a farm, up a remote dirt road. This is what it has become:

The only entire municipality on the National Register of Historic Places

The oldest intentional community in the U.S. (an experimental village) based on the single tax theory of the economist Henry George, which favor one and only one tax. on land, not labor (initiative).
The first garden city in the US. Over 50% of the land is held in common: two greens, a surrounding green belt of forest and a series of pedestrian paths.
The first school to voluntarily desegregate after the 1953 Supreme Court decision
Inspired by the Arts and Crafts Movement, and intended to provide artists and craftsmen with an alternative to the wage slave system.

(Photo is of Guitar Player Statue by Eric Parks in Front of the Craft Shop)

Famous former residents have included Upton Sinclair, Mother Bloor (founder of the Communist Party of America), Scott Nearing, the founders of the Curtis String Quartet and actors Tony Perkins, Jack Klugman and Barbara Bel Geddes. Others include Ruth Jarowslow, the painter Charles Vinson, the sculptor Marcus Aurelius Renzetti, the writers Ashley Burslem, Victor Thaddeus and Bill Frank.

Residents [in 1992] include close to 100 artists, writers and musicians. and all kinds of other people.

Sculptress and Painter Bunni Hurlong
Classical guitarist Lisa Hurlong
Sculptor Eric Parks
Blacksmith Peter Renzetti
Painter Ken Mabrey
Wilmington News Journal editor Harry Themal and News Journal writers Gary Mullinax and Kevin Noonan.

Arden has several noteworthy non-profit, community organizations.

The Arden Club owns the Gild Hall (An 18th-century hay barn), and has gilds focused on a variety of interests, including everything from folk dancing to discussion of Henry Georg's economic theories. The Club sponsors a weekly feast, concerts, an annual Arden Fair, and numerous other events.

The Arden community actually includes three separate communities: Arden, Ardentown and Ardencroft, which were founded in that sequence as Arden's founders acquired property around the original town and set up two similar, but separate villages - Ardentown and Ardencroft.

FREEBIES

Articles about Arden subjects by Russ McKinney

The Bide-a-wee - One of Arden's historic houses, based on interviews of the granddaughter of Arden's Founder who grew up in the house and the long-time current owner, the artist David Burslem.

Eric Parks' Seashell Speakers