Thomas Stedman Whitwell

Thomas Stedman Whitwell (1784–1840) was an English architect and civil engineer, best known for his collaboration with Robert Owen on an unrealised design for a secular communal utopia at New Harmony, Indiana, USA.

Thomas Stedman Whitwell was born in 1784 in Coventry, England. He moved to London in his early twenties, as evidenced in records of his having exhibited at the Royal Academy. In 1811 he was employed in the Architect's Office at the London Docks.

After gaining some experience at the London Docks, Whitwell returned to Coventry where he designed a modest number of built works both there and in Birmingham, few of which survive. His last completed commission in England was for the Brunswick Theatre in Whitechapel, London. Mortalities were suffered after the roof trusses, overloaded with theatre equipment, collapsed days after its opening.

Perhaps due to interest in his exhibition at Leamington Spa of an unbuilt plan for an ideal community named Southville, Whitwell became involved in the designing of a utopian community at a site then named Harmonie (or New Harmony, Indiana) in Indiana, United States, collaborating with the mill owner and social reformer Robert Owen. Owen had previously provided workers at his cotton mills with a pioneering model company town, New Lanark, Scotland, intended to raise the standard of living and education of his employees. Inspired by stories of utopian self-sufficient communities, such as those of the Shakers, springing up in the United States, Owen proposed to create a town unconstrained by the economic conditions and religious influence that he believed had undermined his social experiment in the United Kingdom.

Owen purchased the land and town of Harmonie in Indiana from George Rapp and the Rappites, a separatist religious community. The Rappites had built a substantial and successful town on the site, but sold it to Owen so that they could relocate to an area with more opportunities for trade.

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