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.
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