Bishop Hill State Historic Site

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Bishop Hill State Historic Site is an open-air museum in Henry County, Illinois. It is located about 2 miles north of U.S. Route 34 in Bishop Hill, Illinois.{{cite web|url=http://www.illinois.gov/ihpa/Experience/Sites/NorthWest/Pages/Bishop-Hill.aspx|title=Bishop Hill|publisher=Illinois Historic Preservation Agency|accessdate=February 25, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303080114/http://www.illinois.gov/ihpa/Experience/Sites/NorthWest/Pages/Bishop-Hill.aspx|archive-date=March 3, 2016|url-status=dead}}

File:Colony Church Bishop Hill Colony.jpg

The Illinois Historic Preservation Agency operates four surviving buildings in the village as a state historic site located within the Bishop Hill Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1970, and listed as a National Historic Landmark in 1984.{{cite web|url= http://www.bishophill.com/|title= Welcome to Bishop Hill, Illinois|publisher=Friends of Bishop Hill|accessdate= February 25, 2016}}

Bishop Hill was the site of a utopian religious community founded in 1846 by Swedish pietist Eric Janson. The settlers of Bishop Hill included skilled carpenters and craftsmen. Today visitors can enter the two-story frame Greek Revival-style Colony Church (1848), part of which was once used as single-room apartments by colony residents and which features a museum about Bishop Hill's history and reproductions of Colony artifacts, the three-story stuccoed-brick Colony Hotel (1852-ca. 1860), the small two-story frame Boys Dormitory (ca. 1850), and the Colony barn (mid-1850s) which was relocated behind the Hotel to the site of the original Hotel stable. The state also owns the village park with a gazebo and memorials to the town’s early settlers and Civil War soldiers. A museum building houses a collection of early American primitive paintings by colonist and folk artist Olof Krans.{{cite web|url= http://www.illinoisancestors.org/swedes/bishophillhistory.htm|title= The History of Bishop Hill|publisher= History of Swedes in Illinois-1908|accessdate= February 25, 2016}}{{cite web|url= http://illinois.outfitters.com/illinois/henry/okrans.html|title=Olof Krans|publisher=Friends of Bishop Hill|accessdate= February 25, 2016}}