Interior of the Ministry house at Canterbury, a Shaker community, highlighting the extreme simplicity of Shaker architecture. The Shakers were 19th century America's largest and best known communal utopian society, and by 1840 there were 18 communities from Maine to Kentucky. they were famous for their celibate and austere way of life, for the excellence and simplicity of their work, and for the dance worship that gave them their name.