Ardencroft

Ardencroft is a small village in New Castle County, Delaware, United States, established in 1950 as the third of three neighboring intentional communities collectively known as the Arden villages. Organized as a nonprofit corporation rather than as a trust, Ardencroft was founded with an explicit commitment to racial integration, setting it apart from its predecessor communities and reflecting the social reform movements that were reshaping American life at the midpoint of the twentieth century. Together with Arden and Ardentown, Ardencroft continues to operate according to principles rooted in the land-value taxation philosophy of the nineteenth-century economist and social reformer Henry George.

History and Founding

The origins of Ardencroft are inseparable from the broader history of the Arden villages, which began in the early twentieth century as experiments in applied Georgist economics. The three villages of Arden, Ardentown, and Ardencroft were founded in the early 1900s — with Arden and Ardentown predating Ardencroft — based on Henry George's single-tax theory, and were part of the broader Garden City movement that sought to reimagine the relationship between land ownership, community life, and economic justice.^[1]

Ardencroft itself was established in 1950, growing out of the two existing Arden communities that had already taken root nearby.^[2] The founders of Ardencroft sought to create what they described as a special way of living — one that would extend the Georgist communal ideals of the older villages while making an intentional commitment to diversity and inclusion that went beyond what had been practiced in the earlier communities.^[3]

A key distinction in Ardencroft's founding structure was its incorporation as a nonprofit corporation, in contrast to the trust-based legal structures used to organize Arden and Ardentown. This organizational difference was meaningful: the modern Ardencroft was founded specifically to foster a more racially integrated community than its neighbors.^[4] The timing of its founding, in the years following the Second World War and amid growing national pressure against racial segregation, reflects the broader democratic aspirations that animated Ardencroft's organizers.

Georgist Philosophy and the Land-Tax Model

At the core of all three Arden villages, including Ardencroft, is the philosophy of Henry George, the nineteenth-century American political economist whose 1879 work Progress and Poverty argued that land — unlike labor or capital — should not be privately owned in the conventional sense. George proposed that the economic value of land, which is generated by the community rather than by individual effort, should be captured through a single tax on land values, with the proceeds returned to the community as a whole.

In practical terms, the Arden villages implemented this theory by holding land in common through a trust or corporate structure, while leasing plots to individual residents. Residents pay ground rent rather than purchasing land outright, and the revenues from these leases fund community operations and services. This model means that no individual accumulates wealth simply by holding land, while still permitting residents to build and own structures on their leased plots.

Ardencroft, as the youngest of the three villages, adopted this framework from its founding, though its nonprofit corporate structure introduced some variation in how the model was administered. The Georgist foundation of the Arden villages has attracted sustained attention over the decades, with commentators and journalists noting that Arden, Ardentown, and Ardencroft represent a rare living experiment in land reform that has survived well into the twenty-first century.^[5]

Community Life and Intentional Design

Ardencroft, like its sibling villages, is not a typical American suburb or municipality. It functions as an intentional community — a settlement in which residents have made a deliberate choice to live according to shared principles and social arrangements. The Foundation for Intentional Community has recognized all three Arden villages as historically significant examples of community design rooted in Georgist and Garden City ideals.^[6]

The three villages sit adjacent to one another in northern Delaware, near Wilmington, and while each has its own distinct governance and character, they share a common philosophical heritage. Residents of Ardencroft, like those in Arden and Ardentown, are drawn to the community in part by the alternative model of land tenure it offers, and in part by the social and cultural life that intentional community living tends to encourage.

Ardencroft's particular commitment to racial integration has shaped its community composition and identity since its founding. The decision to organize as a nonprofit corporation, rather than adopting the trust model used in the earlier villages, was partly a practical response to the legal and social landscape of 1950, when nonprofit incorporation offered a more flexible vehicle for a community seeking to welcome residents across racial lines during an era of widespread legal and extralegal segregation across the United States.

Relationship to Arden and Ardentown

The three Arden villages — Arden, Ardentown, and Ardencroft — are distinct legal and administrative entities, but they are closely intertwined in their history, philosophy, and physical proximity. Arden, the oldest of the three, was established in 1900 by the sculptor Frank Stephens and the architect Will Price as a deliberate application of Henry George's ideas to community planning. Ardentown followed as a second community operating on similar principles. Ardencroft emerged half a century later as the third village, founded by residents who wished to extend the Arden model while incorporating a stronger commitment to social equality.

Despite their shared roots, the three villages have maintained separate identities and governance structures. Each manages its own common land and community affairs, and the differences in legal structure — trust versus nonprofit corporation — have produced some variation in how the Georgist model is implemented across the three communities. Observers have noted that the coexistence of three independently governed but philosophically aligned communities in such close geographic proximity makes the Arden villages collectively unusual, if not unique, in the American context.^[7]

The villages have occasionally been discussed in the context of broader debates about housing policy, land taxation, and urban planning, particularly as rising housing costs in American cities have renewed interest in Georgist ideas as a potential policy tool. The practical experience of the Arden villages, including Ardencroft, provides a long-running case study in how land-value taxation and communal land tenure can function at the neighborhood scale over multiple generations.

Notable Residents and Community Voices

Ardencroft has been home to residents who have engaged with national public debates. Wyn Achenbaum, identified in correspondence published by The New York Times as a resident of Ardencroft, Delaware, contributed letters to the editor in September and November 2016 addressing topics of national policy significance, reflecting the engaged civic culture that has historically characterized the Arden communities.^[8]^[9]

The village has also been the home of individuals whose lives were memorialized in local obituaries. Scott Davidson, born in Wilmington in 1957 and a graduate of Concord, passed away on June 22, 2020, at age 63, and was identified as a resident associated with the Ardencroft community.^[10]

Governance and Legal Structure

Ardencroft's status as a nonprofit corporation distinguishes it administratively from Arden, which is organized as a trust. This structural difference affects how the community's common land is managed, how lease revenues are collected and distributed, and how decisions about community membership and development are made. The nonprofit model provides Ardencroft with a legal framework that has allowed it to operate with a degree of flexibility in membership and community policy.

As with the other Arden villages, Ardencroft's residents do not own the land beneath their homes outright. Instead, they hold leases from the community corporation, paying ground rent that reflects the Georgist principle that land value belongs to the community. This arrangement has been maintained continuously since the village's founding in 1950, making Ardencroft one of the longer-running practical applications of Georgist land tenure in the United States.^[11]

The governance of Ardencroft, like that of its neighboring villages, involves community members in decisions about the use and management of common land and shared resources. This participatory model is consistent with the broader intentional community tradition and with the democratic ethos that Henry George's philosophy implies — namely, that the value of land is a product of community rather than individual action, and should therefore be managed collectively.

References

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