Bishop Hill State Historic Site was the site of a utopian religious community founded in 1846 by Swedish pietist Eric Janson in Bishop Hill, Illinois. The Illinois Historic Preservation Agency operates four surviving buildings in the village as a state historic site located within the Bishop Hill Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1970, and listed as a National Historic Landmark in 1984.
Visitors can enter the 1848 Colony Church (1848), part of which was once used as single-room apartments by colony residents and which features a museum about Bishop Hill's history and reproductions of Colony artifacts, the 1850s Colony Hotel, the 1850 Boys Dormitory, and the mid-1850s Colony barn.
The state also owns the village park with a gazebo and memorials to the town’s early settlers and Civil War soldiers.
A museum building houses a collection of paintings by colonist and folk artist Olof Krans.
Famous quotes containing the words bishop, hill, state, historic and/or site:
“They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.”
—Elizabeth Bishop (19111979)
“The fact that Romans once inhabited her reflects no little dignity on Nature herself; that from some particular hill the Roman once looked out on the sea.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“Resorts advertised for waitresses, specifying that they must appear in short clothes or no engagement. Below a Gospel Guide column headed, Where our Local Divines Will Hang Out Tomorrow, was an account of spirited gun play at the Bon Ton. In Jeff Winneys California Concert Hall, patrons bucked the tiger under the watchful eye of Kitty Crawhurst, popular lady gambler.”
—Administration in the State of Colo, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“It is, all in all, a historic error to believe that the master makes the school; the students make it!”
—Robert Musil (18801942)
“The present hour is always wealthiest when it is poorer than the future ones, as that is the pleasantest site which affords the pleasantest prospects.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)