documenting
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Hunterdon County Churches |
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 Less Stately Mansions: the 18th & 19th century churches of Hunterdon County, New Jersey by Frank L. Greenagel 320 pages, 225+ b&w illustrations, tables, glossary, appendices, bibliography, index 8 x 10 in., paperback. List price: $30.00 ISBN-13: 978-0-0-9818851-0-0 Publication date: July 2008 (revised edition) “There
was a time when many of the churches undoubtedly seemed more prominent—the
Methodist church in Hampton overlooking the lower part of town, the
Presbyterian church in Glen Gardner with its
tall spire, Cherryville’s fishscale-shingled Baptist church, both
the Methodist and Reformed churches in High Bridge, and the Presbyterian
churches in Grandin and Milford come to mind. But the maturing of trees
and the filling in of adjacent property with residential and commercial
buildings have reduced the relative scale, so it is not easy to imagine
the dominance that some churches once exerted on their immediate neighborhoods.
They would be the exception in any case; most of Hunterdon’s churches
are more modest in scale, reflecting the modest circumstances and social
aspirations of their members.”
Phillipsburg resident Frank Greenagel is an established local and regional historian and photographer. He focuses on the religious architecture and the associated cultural and economic history, and lectures frequently on those subjects. He is the author of several books and articles on the state's religious architecture, notably The New Jersey Churchscape (Rutgers University Press, 2000), Historic Churches of Somerset County (The History Press, 2006) and Historic Churches of Sussex County (2008). He has photographed more than 1,250 old churches, meetinghouses and synagogues in New Jersey, and expects (eventually) to complete books on the religious architecture of all 21 counties in the state. He is also the author of the article on “religious architecture” in the Encyclopedia of New Jersey, and of an extended analysis of late Methodist architecture, published in New Jersey History, the country's oldest scholarly journal dedicated to history. A former professor at the Universities of Minnesota and Colorado, Dr. Greenagel is an accomplished photographer who once studied with Ansel Adams. He uses a large format camera and shoots only in black-and-white. Order from Amazon |
