Roofless Church

This land is part of the homeland of the Miami (Myaamia), the Piankeshaw, the Wea, the Shawnee, and the Kickapoo, who lived and traveled along the Wabash River for generations before European settlement. Their presence in the lower Wabash valley shaped the routes and clearings that later communities would use.

In 1814 a German religious group called the Harmonists, or Rappites, led by George Rapp, established the town of Harmonie here, building tidy brick houses, workshops, and communal structures as they awaited what they believed was the imminent second coming. About a decade later they sold the entire town to the Welsh industrialist and social reformer Robert Owen, who renamed it New Harmony and tried to build a secular utopia founded on education, science, and cooperation. Owen's community soon dissolved, but the scholars, scientists, and educators it drew left a lasting mark, and New Harmony became an early American center of learning.

In the twentieth century, Jane Blaffer Owen, a Texan who had married a descendant of Robert Owen, devoted much of her long life to restoring New Harmony and enriching it with new art and architecture. She saw the town's utopian past as a living inheritance rather than a museum piece, and she brought in leading modern artists and designers to add to it.

For the Roofless Church she chose Philip Johnson, one of the most prominent American architects of the century, and the sculptor Jacques Lipchitz, whose bronze 'The Descent of the Holy Spirit' stands beneath the dome. The result was dedicated in 1960 as an interdenominational sanctuary, a place where, as Owen put it, one roof, the sky, could unite all who came to worship.

The sanctuary is entered through a walled garden and a set of doors, and its focal point is the shingled dome, its shape often compared to a rosebud or an inverted rose. The dome shelters the Lipchitz sculpture while leaving the surrounding space open, so that light, weather, and sky are all part of the experience. The effect is intimate and expansive at once.

Around the church, New Harmony holds other works of art and architecture connected to Jane Owen's vision, including a later meditative structure and quiet garden spaces. Together they make the town a rare place where modern design and a nineteenth-century utopian dream share the same brick streets.

New Harmony is small and walkable, and the Roofless Church is best experienced as part of a slow wander through the town's historic core, its restored Harmonist houses, and its gardens. The pace is unhurried, and the town leans into reflection and craft rather than spectacle.

Because the sanctuary is open to the sky, the season and weather shape a visit. Spring and fall bring mild air and color to the gardens, summer is green and warm, and a clear day at any time of year opens the sanctuary to full light. It is a place to sit quietly as much as to look.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.