The Woman's Commonwealth

The Commonwealth was a women's land-based commune based on the doctrines of religious perfectionism, separationism and celibacy. It was formed by a group of middle class protestant women led by McWhirter in Bolton, Texas. At first it was a prayer group created to deal with authoritarian and sometimes violent or absent husbands, but from that community of women a commune-like lifestyle grew. McWhirter claimed she could communicate with God, without the need for a male religious leader. She led a group of around 30 adults into financial and spiritual independence. 

The Commonwealth grew and they were economically successful, they had boarding houses and two hotels, companies to manage their properties, and farms to provide food for their dining rooms. They started the first public library in Belton, the Woman's Wednesday Club Library, out of one of their boarding houses. The commune is considered by many to be one of the first women’s shelters. The women built their houses and hotels, following advice of a builder but erected and designed by them. They built exclusively by accretion, and not following a larger scale master plan. This means that they only built what they needed, but also changed the purpose of spaces according to the current needs. The architecture of the Central Hotel (their main building) reflects their religious, but also first wave feminist values. Their need to break free from the isolation of housework meant a new idea of spatial organization. Kitchen, pantry and typical rooms attributed to the women’s tasks were pleasant, large enough to facilitate communal work, multi-functional and no longer hidden away. Small bedrooms for each woman to acknowledge privacy (they were still pious and celibate), but large group areas facilitated the productivity and was proof of the communist approach to labor and life they had. What they aimed to achieve spatially was never a finality but a never-ending evolution of the surrounding architecture, to allow spontaneous exchanges to mixed use of space.