Jean-Baptiste André Godin

At age seventeen, he made a tour of France as journeyman with his older cousin, Jean-Nicholas Moret, also an ironsmith.

[2] Returning to Esquéhéries with his new wife in 1840, Godin started a small factory for the manufacture of castings for heating-stoves.

Godin became an ardent disciple of the utopian Charles Fourier, whom he started studying in 1842, and thought hard about the future of workers and their communities.

Each of these blocks had a large central court covered with a glass roof under which children could play in all weather.

By 1872, when a correspondent from the American Harper's Magazine visited the complex, 900 workers (including women) and their families were housed there, for a total population of about 1200.

Opposite the main block was a building containing a theater for concerts and dramatic entertainments, and a primary school for children over six.

[4] A separate block, known as the "économats", contained various shops, refreshment and recreation rooms of various kinds, and grocery and stores for the purchase of every necessity.

Produce and goods were purchased at wholesale prices and sold with little mark-up, with workers manning the shops.

[1] In 1880 Godin created the association documents for the Familistère, converting it as he had long intended into a co-operative society, eventually to be owned by the workers.

In 1968 the cooperative association for the Social Palace was dissolved, and the apartments were sold at moderate prices by Godin S.A.

Restoration of the economats building was completed in 2008, with spaces adapted as a cafe, a bookstore and gift shop, and an exhibition area.

[6] The communal laundry rooms, baths and swimming pool, in a separate building on the opposite bank, where water was heated by the factory, had become derelict but have been restored.