The authoritative source on
  early churches of New Jersey

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We've created a database and photographic inventory on more than half the 18th & 19th century churches in the state and add to it each month. We welcome and solicit all contributions and suggestions from our visitors.

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   Photographic Inventory

First Presbyterian Church of Belvidere
Belvidere, Warren County

It is fitting that this fine Romanesque Presbyterian church sits on the town square in Belvidere, the county seat. Of the 66 churches built in Warren County in the 18th and 19th century, about one-third were erected by Presbyterians. The earliest settlers generally got pride-of-place in the center of town (although in Belvidere a local businessman gave plots of land to the Methodist and Episcopal churches as well as to this Presbyterian congregation). The congregation was organized in 1834 and this building erected in 1860.
     It anticipates the modified Wren-Gibbs style that was to be exceptionally popular in the central part of the state; it has a shallow pitched roof characteristic of the Greek Revival, and a multi-tiered tower-belfry-steeple from the Wren-Gibbs tradition. The round-arch windows are a departure from the Gothic that had been fairly dominant for a decade or two. Compare this to the Methodist church erected in Tranquility (Sussex) a dozen years later.