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The Ferrer Center and Stelton Colony were an anarchist social center and colony, respectively, organized to honor the memory of anarchist pedagogue Francisco Ferrer and to build a school based on his model, Escuela Moderna, in the United States.
In the widespread outcry following Ferrer's execution in 1909 and the international movement that sprung in its wake, a group of New York anarchists convened as the Ferrer Association in 1910. Their headquarters, the Ferrer Center, hosted a variety of cultural events in the avant-garde arts and radical politics, including lectures, discussions, and performances. It was also home to the Ferrer Modern School, a libertarian, day school that emphasized unplanned, undogmatic curriculum. The Center moved several times throughout Manhattan to establish a space conducive to children's play. Following a bomb plot and police infiltration, several anarchists from the association decided to take the school out to the country.
The school moved to what would become the Ferrer Colony in Stelton, New Jersey, 30 miles outside New York City, in 1914. The colony was based around the school and land was individually parceled such that, in the spirit of anarchist volunteerism, anyone could sell and exit the colony at their prerogative. They intended for the colony to form the center of a national libertarian education movement. The school floundered in its first years and passed through multiple administrations, the longest of which with co-principals Elizabeth and Alexis Ferm. The school closed in 1953. It had been a model for short-lived Ferrer schools across the country and lasted among the longest.
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