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LITR 5439 Literary & Historical Utopias
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2nd Research Post 2011
Meryl Bazaman
Living La Reunion – Prosperous Utopian Conventions
It is said that traces of utopia exist within and beyond the
Dallas Skyline. When the City of Dallas, Texas assimilated the neighboring
utopian city of La Reunion, Dallas incorporated the elements of La Reunion’s
architecture and of La Reunion’s artistic spirit and character.
Although my previous experiment varied substantially from this experiment
in topic, I approached both topics with a similar notion- the notion that
utopian themes and conventions are often organically incorporated into the real
or functioning world. It is my belief Utopian conventions and themes
consistently appear and reappear in ways that mimic a naturalistic cycle of
life: they are born, are grown, and decompose in ways that permit their
surrounding cities to flourish. This new experiment continues to ponder the
following questions: Do utopias vanish “at the touch of experience” or do their
citizens and ideas become absorbed into the surrounding communities? In the
particular case of this experiment, however, a more specific question emerges.
Did the influence of the La Reunion utopian community simply vanish upon its
demise or does it remain alive spiritually and physically in the Texan city of
Dallas in the forms of artistic community and architecture?
In More’s Utopia,
the ideal Utopians are “unwearied pursuers of knowledge…”(More, 55). More’s
Utopians, whether learning languages, decorating their homes, reading, or
attending the business of agriculture, were individuals knowledgeable in both
human abstractions and the concrete realities of human existence. La Reunion’s
founder Victor Considerant sought to formulate a similar good place inspired by
the cooperative industry a colony inspired by Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity
could provide. Unfortunately for Considerant, La Reunion’s inhabitants were far
more specialized than More’s Utopians. Recognized primarily as craftsmen and
artisans as opposed to farmers, the inhabitants of La Reunion would ultimately
fall to the very real demands of a harsh environment, reality of class strife,
and inability to weather the “impetus of individualism (Dallas Historical
Society, n.p, Kagay, 89). Between the lack of agricultural know how and lack of
individual motivation and rewards for what progress was accomplished, the La
Reunion community was never able to accomplish self-reliance or progress. La
Reunion’s inability to modify the communal temperament and rise above its
citizens natural tendencies and aptitudes rendered it ripe for dissolution; a
dissolution that would revitalize and contribute to the growth of its neighbor –
the city of Dallas.
According to Rejebian’s article in
The Southwestern Historical Quarterly,
“…the reason why Dallas is superior to other Texas cities in many ways, its
superior culture, its love of the arts, can be directly attributed to these
French idealists, all men of culture…”. After the collapse of La Reunion, those
French, Swedish, Belgian, and German inhabitants who did not relocate back to
their native lands or other parts of the US, contributed their unique skills and
abilities to Dallas. This loss of La Reunion was considered a benefit due to the
city’s new acquisition of literate, multi-linguistic, artists, and scientists.
As a result of this migration and the beneficial ramifications for Dallas, the
spirit of La Reunion remains alive in the La Reunion TX artistic community.
Describing itself as a 501k artist residency that seeks to transform community
through art and social change, La Reunion TX acknowledges its inspiration was
drawn from the La Reunion utopian community (La Reunion TX, n.p). La Reunion TX
shaped by the successes and failures of La Reunion offer young artists a
regulated version of a communal utopia. By allowing its participants to
contribute, participate, and ultimately provide for Dallas, the La Reunion TX
members work together to provide participants aspects that highlight the
strengths of utopian conventions: a self paced opportunity to function
communally and opportunity to use individual skills for the benefit of all.
Between the years 1855-1858, the city of La Reunion inspired
its neighbor Dallas with the use of distinctive and ordinary architecture
materials seeped in collectivist utopian themes. La Reunion’s rapid building
method of filing wooden boxes with crushed stones, staking those containers like
cinder blocks, and then stuccoing the resulting rough hewn wall not only was
recorded as being impressive; it was also used by Dallas citizens throughout the
late nineteenth century (Kagay, 91). Despite the inability of La Reunion to
extensively replicate its buildings, residents of Dallas perceived the structure
of La Reunion’s architecture to be visually unique and were able to make it
practically applicable. Dallas, with her larger populace and wider labor base,
literally applied the novelty of La Reunion’s techniques on a grander scale.
Dallas’s ability to produce and expand the structural concepts of La Reunion
gave the utopian city a historical association with architectural ingenuity.
Furthermore, the “good place” utopian premise that unified the ethnically and
socio-economical class diverse inhabitants of La Reunion continues to embody the
La Reunion Cemetery – as Fish Trap Cemetery. These simplistic granite markers
once meant to unify utopian idealists in death now unify all Dallas and La
Reunion’s flotsam of life (Rejebian, 478). Victor Considerant’s followers
united, lived, diverged, and in cases reunited in death at the destination of
the La Reunion Cemetery. Despite the individualistic tendencies that ultimately
caused La Reunion’s dismantlement, the consistency of the granite rock and
simplistic marker structure mark the vein of utopian convention still alive and
well in Dallas.
Today, La Reunion lives on in the
physical body of Dallas through distinctive architectural markers above and
below ground. At first glance, The Dallas Skyline reveals a uniquely utopian
protrusion- the Reunion Tower. Described by Frommer’s Texas as, dominating the
Dallas skyline and rising 50 stories, the tower’s namesake is derived from none
other than the La Reunion community. Similar to their La Reunion counterparts,
the construction of the Reunion Tower was built as an exhibition of difference.
According to the Times Daily, the Reunion Tower was made of reinforced concrete
with a dome lit by 260 lights (Times Daily, n.p). As La Reunion was a town
founded by artisans for the sake of community, the Reunion Tower utilizes the
crafts and artisan inspired skills for the sake of community. Arising from the
Dallas skyline, the utopian conventions of community can still on a clear night
be seen as far away as 30 to 40 miles. Furthermore, the La Reunion Cemetery,
also known as Fish Trap Cemetery, still encompasses the utopian spirit of a
communal home in the inclusivity of its burial requirements.The Dallas Morning
News writes, “Some
155 years after La Reunion's French, Swiss and Belgian pioneers established a
brief 2,000-acre foothold near the Trinity River, their cemetery's state
historical marker recalls that communal dream - one dashed by farming failures,
financial challenges and other realities.”
(Appleton, n.p). Considerant sought to unify the diverse 400 members of La
Reunion through communal life. At the Fish Trap Cemetery, the remaining,
decomposing bodies of these European settlers share a communal resting place
with the Americans they sought to cooperate with. Fish Trap Cemetery, truly
devoid of the influences of nationality and living needs of individuality,
allows true realization of Considerant’s La Reunion utopian community – a true
communal existence.
The demise of La Reunion has been anything but final. Its
utopian conventions both spiritual and physical continue to thrive in Dallas
through its contributions to the arts and architecture of Dallas. The utopian
compost of La Reunion provided and continues to provide nourishment and certain
sustenance for the city of Dallas.
Sources:
Appleton, Roy. “ Upkeep of
early Dallas settlers’ cemetery an eternal problem” DallasNews.com
(6/13/10) n. pag. Retrieved July 1, 2011, from DallasNews.com
<http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/dallas/headlines/20100613-Upkeep-of-early-Dallas-settlers-376.ece>
Baird, David, Peterson, Eric, & Schlecht, Neil E. Frommer’s
Texas. Hoboken: Wiley Publishing Inc, 2009. Print.
Kagay, Donald J. “The Utopian Colony of La Reunion as Social
Mirror of Frontier Texas and Icon of Modern Dallas.”
International Social Science Review
85.No 3& 4 (2010): 87-106
More,Thomas. Utopia. New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 1997.
Print.
Rejebian, Ermance V. “The French Colony in Dallas County”
The Southwestern Historical Quarterly,
43 No. 4 (1940) 472-478.
“About La Reunion TX” La Reunion TX Website
“ La Reunion” Texas State Historical Association Online n. pag
<http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/uel01>
“Nation’s Towers” Times
Daily, July 27, 1986: 14. Print.
“The La Reunion Colony” Dallas Historical Society Website
