10:00 – 4:00 each day — Wednesday & Thursday: Grounds only — Friday – Sunday: Guided Tours
The Visitor Center is temporarily closed for repairs.
Please head directly to the Feast Hall, 1401 Church Street, for admission & tours.
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Our Mission
Old Economy Village preserves, presents, and proclaims the exemplary history of the Harmony Society and inspires people to strive for a better future. Old Economy Village is administered by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission and is actively supported by the Friends of Old Economy Village which is a non-profit community-based organization.
See PHMC’s historic collections online
George Rapp’s silk velvet coat and cap
Our History
Old Economy Village, a National Historic Landmark, tells the story of the Harmony Society, one of the oldest and most successful religious communal groups of the nineteenth century. The Society sought to create a utopia inhabited by German Lutheran separatists who subscribed to the mystical religious teachings of their leader George Rapp (1757-1847). In Economy, they waited for the second coming of the Messiah.
Visit the Archives
Harmonist History
In 1804, the follower of the Separatist George Rapp (1757-1847) emigrated to America from Iptingen (near Stuttgart) in southwest Germany seeking religious and economic freedom. Nearly 800 farmers and craftsmen followed their leader to Butler County, Pennsylvania where they built the town of Harmony. Ten years later they migrated westward to Posey County, Indiana founding a second town named Harmony, which today is known as New Harmony. In 1824, the Harmony Society returned to Pennsylvania, this time settling in Beaver County along the Ohio River. There they founded “Oekonomie,” now better known as Old Economy Village.
