Book Description
"Place held sacred by a community, particularly ones with a rich architectural context, offer a fascinating subject for an artist. But there are temptations that ought to be resisted in a scholarly work, and so I have avoided an impulse to produce a "Great Churches of the Jersey Shore" kin of book. I have tried to look on all through the impartial lens of an Atget or Walk Evans or George Tice. The real subject of this inventory is not so much the architecture of the Jersey Shore and Pine Barrens communities, but the traditions and changes in function, scale, style, construction, and prominence of the churches, meetinghouses, and synagogues, and the cultural, social, economic and liturgical forces that shaped them. - from the Preface. The work includes all the surviving houses of worship in Ocean, Atlantic, Cape May, and the shore regions of Monmouth County, plus much of the Pine Barrens. Frank Greenagel's seminal work on the old churches and meetinghouses of New Jersey, titled 'The New Jersey Churchscape' was published by Rutgers University Press in 2001. His most recent book entitled 'An Architectural Stew' on the religious architecture of Middlesex County. 'Steeple Envy' is the title of his examination of the churches of Morris County, 'A Mighty Architectural Stout' is his work on the Essex County churchscape, and 'A Plausible Expression of Piety' details his work on the religious architecture of Hudson County. Greenagel is the author the article on religious architecture of the Encyclopedia of New Jersey, and of an essay on Methodist church architecture for 'New Jersey History,' the oldest scholarly journal published in America. His website dedicated to the old churches, meetinghouses and synagogues of the state, is www.njchurchscape.com. He is presently leading an effort to restore a late eighteenth-century Georgian manor in Phillipsburg." -Back cover.
