Pleasant Rowland, the creator of the American Girl doll empire, has been obsessively renovating tiny Aurora, New York, to fit her demanding aesthetic vision of small-town life. cliomiso reports
Aerial view of the Inns of Aurora, including the spa Photo: Inns of Aurora Most people leave their small-town alma mater with not much more than a distant fondness for the time they spent there. Not Pleasant Rowland, the creator of the American Girl doll empire, who graduated in 1962 from Wells College in the upstate New York town of Aurora.
Aurora, a tiny town of some 724 people, is now Rowland’s perfect upstate village. In a speech she gave at the reopening of one of the inns in 2003, Rowland said the town reminded her “of the values and traditions of another, more tender time.” When she’d first revisited the school almost 25 years after graduation, though, she found it in a state of economic decline like many small upstate towns.
Like most rich peoples’ projects, the concept doesn’t really have to make sense beyond the fact that it fits into Rowland’s demanding aesthetic vision of small-town life. Some residents have bristled at a millionaire turning Aurora into a town-size dollhouse — the New York Times reported in 2007 that people made bumper stickers reading “Aurora Was Pleasant Before.
Rowland wrote a message on the inns’ site that was meant to inspire girls everywhere : “Please hang onto your dreams, keep on being the best that you can be, and some day one of you will be president.” For Rowland herself, it seems the dream is just a little smaller: remaking an entire town just to her liking. Is that so much to ask for?
From left: Spa cafe. Photo: Inns of AuroraThe pool room at the spa. Photo: Inns of Aurora From top: Spa cafe. Photo: Inns of AuroraThe pool room at the spa. Photo: Inns of Aurora This article has been updated with a comment from Pleasant Rowland that she turned down the state’s offer of a $1.5 million grant for the inns.
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