In Lafayette, Robert Rodman and Rodman Manufacturing provided most of the structures and improvements that gave the community the character of a village. The company built and owned the company store and village post office, the village meeting hall, and almost all employee housing, including two company-staffed boarding houses. Rodman and his family were the primary financial backers of the Advent Street church, and they paid to relocate, upgrade, and expand the village’s two schoolhouses. They also provided a public park and picnic ground on Liberty Hill behind Rodman’s mansion house, and funded a winter crypt to hold the dead during months when graves could not be dug. Employees of Rodman Manufacturing maintained these structures, kept streets and lanes in good repair, planted trees and other landscape materials, and helped make Lafayette a place its residents and the Rodman family could be proud of.