Subtitle: Encountering Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Churches
Author: Frank L. Greenagel
Subject: New Jersey and Regional Studies/Architecture
Cloth ISBN 0-8135-2990-5
Pages: 7x10, 240 pp., 225 b&w illus.
Description: A photographic history of notable New Jersey churches.
Although best known as the Garden State, New Jersey could also be called the Church State. The state boasts thousands of houses of worship, with more than one thousand still standing that were built in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Frank L. Greenagel has selected two hundred of his photographs of these historic landmarks for an examination of why they are sited where they are and why they look the way they do.
Greenagel has sought out and included images of not only mainstream Christian churches, but also Jewish synagogues and the places of worship of such religious groups as the Moravians, the Church of the Brethren, and the Seventh Day Baptists. The photographs are arranged chronologically within sections on three major early settlement regions of the state ¾
the Hudson River, the Delaware River, and the Raritan Valley. For each building, Greenagel details the date of construction, the cultural, historic, and religious influences that shaped it, the architectural details that distinguish it, and what purpose it currently serves.
Frank L. Greenagel is the managing director of Guided Learning Systems and has worked as a publisher, industrial psychologist, and college professor. The Hunterdon County (N.J.) Planning Board honored his photographic work on the countys historic churches with their annual Award for Planning.
Praise for New Jersey Churchscape
"The typical New England church is white clapboard with a tall steeple, probably Congregational and built on the village square. Is there a typical New Jersey church? There is, according to Frank L. Greenagel. . . . It is set in a remote plot (or was when it was built). The oldest churches were made of wood only when a congregation could not afford brick or stone. The building is not always recognizable as a church; it could be a schoolhouse or town hall. . . . Mr. Greenagel spent five years researching and photographing many of the state's 1,100 churches from the 18th and 19th centuries, and his book includes 225 of them with commentary."-The New York Times (New Jersey section)
"'One of my hopes is people will pay much more attention to the stewardship of these buildings,' he says. 'It's lasted 200 years; treat it with respect. Greenagel's Web site, njchurchscape.com, offers good information on New Jersey houses of worship."-Home News Tribune (East Brunswick, NJ)
"Greenagel's ecumenical approach to the subject is interesting. Photos of great stone edifices of mainline Protestant and Roman Catholic churches are there. So are early Jewish synagogues and the places of worship of such religious groups as the Moravians, the Church of the brethren and Friends meeting houses."-Asbury Park Press
Excerpt from New Jersey Churchscape
"If we would understand the many ways the churchscape can inform our appreciation of the community, its history and something of the cultural history of the people and the denomination who built it, we must expand the definition of churchscape to include the location and immediate setting, the scale or mass of the building, the churchyard, if there is one, the materials and, of course, the architectural style and details."
