If you stand in the right spot of the Feast Hall at Old Economy Village and sing a note into its vaulted emptiness, the sound takes on a silvery, other-worldly echo that seems to emanate from the 19th century.

That echo is just one of the irreplaceable things that would be lost to posterity if Old Economy in Beaver County has to close due to a $15.7 million cut in the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission budget.

Also lost would be a remarkably intact, authentic chunk of history -- a National Historic Landmark site with noteworthy architecture, gardens, manuscripts, furniture and textiles -- that exists nowhere else.

The six-acre site is what remains of the original 3,000 acres where members of the Harmony Society created a self-sustaining Christian communal existence in the 1800s. The Harmonists were so successful in their many industries and attracted so many followers that even with their policy of celibacy, they still outlasted many other utopian dreams.

In a world where reproductions often pass as history, Old Economy stands out as the real thing.

Real people lived, worked and worshipped in the site's 17 buildings. They made the bricks that made the structures, built and used the furniture, turned the red Pennsylvania clay into pottery, grew the grapes and made the wine as well as the wine barrels. Harmonists also spun the silk and wove the fabric, played the musical instruments, worked in the general store, the tailor, printing, tin and blacksmith shops, dipped quill pens into the ink wells, cooked in the cauldrons and feasted at the long tables.

All of this and more is explained by the village's tour guides and historical interpreters who lead roughly 25,000 visitors a year, including up to 9,000 school students, through the site. But on Monday, nine employees learned they were being furloughed. Six other open positions have gone unfilled. Workers and volunteers yesterday said there is no way to keep an educational facility operating under those circumstances.

"It may take as much as $500,000 a year to take over the site," said Kevin Flannery, associate president of Friends of Old Economy Village. "That's an impossible number for us to raise."

Mr. Flannery noted that the state has poured $22 million into the site over the last 10 years, money that built a new visitors center with climate-controlled galleries and restored a number of buildings.

"That's a huge investment to make and then basically shut the place down," he said.

The state of limbo was evident yesterday in the main house once occupied by Harmony Society founder Johann George Rapp, where doorways were partially hung with evergreen boughs for the Christmas holiday tour.

"I just kind of stopped decorating," said Jo Ellen Perciavalle, dressed in the Harmonist garb of a long, dark-blue cotton dress, checkered apron, kerchief and straw hat tied under her chin. Her last day of work will be Friday.

Patty Clendennen, who has volunteered at Old Economy for 25 years, said she's angry that the budget-cutting and furloughs were so severe.

"I've called and written everyone I can think of," she said.

"We all knew something was going to happen but we never expected it to be this."

State Rep. Robert F. Matzie, D-Ambridge, said yesterday that furloughs were necessary but that stripping the staff to a skeleton crew was going too far. He said he was never informed of the possibility of an indefinite closing of the site and that he was exploring all options to save it.

At a meeting last night of the Friends of Old Economy Village, members agreed that two upcoming Christmas events will be held as planned, Mr. Flannery said. They also will ask Beaver County state legislators to provide them with enough funding to keep the village operating through the end of the year, he said.

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