The North American Phalanx was a secular utopian socialist commune located in Colts Neck Township, Monmouth County, New Jersey. The community was the longest-lived of about 30 Fourierist Associations in the United States which emerged during a brief burst of popularity during the decade of the 1840s. The North American Phalanx was established in September 1843 and included the active participation of writer Albert Brisbane and newspaper publisher Horace Greeley, two of the leading figures of the Fourierist movement. The Association was disbanded in January 1856, following a catastrophic fire which destroyed a number of the community's productive enterprises. At the time of its termination it was the last of about 30 Fourierist Associations established during the 1840s still in existence and thus was the longest-lived. The main residential dwelling of the phalanx, a three-story wooden structure, stood vacant until it was itself destroyed by fire in November 1972. History Background Charles Fourier (1772–1837) was a French philosopher who believed that the structure of modern civilization led to poverty, unemployment, isolation, and unhappiness and that people would be better off living in organized communal societies rather than individual family units. Fourier developed the idea of the phalanstère, a collectively dwelling and cooperatively working community of 1,620 people organized on the basis of a joint stock company. While never pursued in France during his lifetime, Fourier's ideas found practical realization in the United States in the 1840s and early 1850s as a result of the books and newspaper columns of Albert Brisbane (1809–1890). It was Brisbane who translated, distilled, and adapted Fourier's ideas for an American audience, largely through the pages of Horace Greeley's New York Tribune, stirring popular enthusiasm for the French intellectual's ideas for the formation of local associations, known as "phalanxes." Early in 1843 a general call was issued in New York City by Brisbane, Greeley, and others, seeking local organizations of Fourierist groups. This call inspired the formation in the summer of 1843 of a group calling itself the Albany Branch of the North American Phalanx. About 20 families participated in the official planning of the group, of which about a dozen families formally subscribed to the draft constitution, on August 12, 1843. It was believed by the first participants that considerable capital would be raised for establishment of an American cooperative association and that a number of other branch organizations would emerge throughout the New York