No. 66 April 2008
The authoritative source
on
early churches in New Jersey
ISSN 1543-3250
About this site
We've created a database and photographic inventory containing more than a thousand of the 18th & 19th century churches in the state and add to it each month. We solicit all contributions and suggestions from visitors.
find
a church
index
to the articles
— Highlights —
Last
month's feature
Somerset County churches
Book
reviews
What Hath God Wrought?
Can
you identify this church?
Florence
- unknown building
Vintage
photo of the month
Freehold - First Baptist
Endangered
churches
A dozen at-risk buildings are noted. Submit your nomination for the most
endangered churches in the state. We will research the submissions
and feature a church now and then, and keep people informed of the status
of the building.
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this article
Do have additional information about any of the buildings in this article?
Or perhaps an old photograph or an article that can enrich our knowledge?
Please submit that information for the benefit of other visitors.
How
to use this site
Suggest a church for inclusion
Glossary
List of churches, by county
Photographic notes
Links to related sites
Contact us
Feature of the month
Where have
you been?
I've taken a long sabbatical from this website, basically
to concentrate on an
application
for the National Register of Historic Places designation
for two historic buildings in
Phillipsburg (pictured here). The application was reviewed by the state's
Historic Preservation Office
last month, and they voted unanimously to certify the properties. That
means, 
I've
been told, that state designation as a Historic Place will follow shortly,
and the National Register designation sometime later— perhaps by
the end of the year, but eventually. It was a long and demanding process,
and
I learned a lot more architectural termin-ology than I expected.
But it's an enlightening exercise—one designed to aid preservation
and to offer some recognition, but also to encourage exceptionally thorough
documentation of styles and construction practices, and even something
of local
history.
I spent
hours in the
Hall of
Records in Belvidere and Newton, checking old deeds, wills and other
conveyances; just looking at the old calligraphy in deeds was fascinating.
Librarians got used to my requests for interlibrary loans. I traveled
to Brooklyn
and
Manhattan,
Jersey
City,
Hoboken, and
once to
Washington
(OK, not
all that exotic) to examine brownstone mansions of the 1870s. I measured
walls, doorways, ceiling heights, looked closely at old stone foundations,
and researched Essex and Mercer quarries where the brownstone might have
come from.
And I
looked
with
envy at the bronze plaques displayed on a number of old churches signifying
there was something special about the building. And now I look forward
to seeing similar plaques on two buildings in Phillipsburg (I live in
one of them) in the not-too-distant future.
That
did not occupy the entire year, of course, and my other excuse offered
in expiation
(to use a metaphor on a sacral level in keeping
with the subject of the website) is concentrated work on a couple of
books I've had in process for a long time. One is about to be published,
and the remainder of this month's issue is devoted to that; the other
is on the old churches of Monmouth County (there are 115 of them), which
is at least two months away from completion. I will need a lot of help
from people acquainted with Monmouth County on that one. Oh, and there
were also two extended visits
to
granddaughters in California and a month-long backpacking expedition
to the Four Corners. I apologize to the many faithful visitors of the
website for my neglect, and especially to those who sent emails providing
corrections and clarifications. I do appreciate your interest, but I often
went months
without even checking my email, knowing
that to do so would be a major distraction. I have been working in the
field, however, and have added almost 200 new churches (that is, old churches)
to the database in the last year. That said, I'm back on the job here—for
a while, at least.
Four
years ago I completed work on all the old churches and meetinghouses
of Warren County—69 of them erected before 1900. I prepared a
book containing 268 pages of photographs, descriptions, an extended
interpretive essay, endnotes, lists and tables, glossary, and index;
all the things
one
expects in a scholarly work. And I did all that knowing there were
no bookstores in Warren County (except the ones at the two colleges
which mainly sell textbooks, mugs and sweatshirts). Not a particularly
good use of time, you say. Perhaps.I made a minor effort to “publish” the book on a CD, which could be read by anyone with a computer and a copy of Adobe's Acrobat Reader, and I gave copies of that CD to several of the libraries that had been helpful to me. I looked into having the book printed in a traditional manner, but the cost was about $27 a copy in the small quantity I thought could be sold, and the quality of the reproductions of the images was marginal, so I passed on that option, confident that ultimately the nascent publish-on-demand technology would bring the investment into line with the size of the anticipated market. That has now happened and The Warren Churchscape: religious architecture in 18th & 19th century Warren County, New Jersey will be available through Amazon. (There's a link at the end of the article.) It's a soft cover book, more-or-less indistinguishable from most of the paperbacks you'd find on the shelves at Borders or Barnes & Noble. Amazon prints only on demand—that is, when they get an order. I remember years ago when I worked for a major college textbook publisher—we often (before my arrival, of course) made two mistakes: publishing the wrong book for the market, and printing too many of them. The first mistake is probably unavoidable, but the second is not. Amazon avoids both mistakes. The author alone decides that the investment of time and money is worth it, and Amazon prints only when it has a paying customer. Nice idea, but the technology had to mature for it to work. Now it has.
Warren is not the only county with a dearth of bookstores—Sussex, Salem, Gloucester, Cumberland, and Ocean are also somewhat bereft, although not nearly so much so as Warren. Without ghosts, secrets, pirates, dogs or the promise of better sex in the title, a book on the regional history of religious architectural doesn't stand much of a chance. Unless one can find an audience via the 'net. We'll see. If anyone out there wants to buy the book and review it, Amazon will print your review, and so will I, good or bad, on this website under Book Reviews.
I've written six books on the state's churches so far, and that means 15 to go if I am to realize my goal of a complete photographic and interpretive account of the 18th and 19th century churches of the state (there are 21 counties in New Jersey). The Somerset book was published by The History Press a year ago, but the books on Hunterdon, Morris, and Sussex—totaling more than 700 pages, and all done in minuscule print runs, will be re-issued over the course of the next few months via the publish-on-demand method with Amazon. Four will also be available on CD by mid-summer via this website.
You can see two two-page spreads from the Warren book by clicking here; it will call up a PDF file taken from the book. Here is a link to the publish-on-demand affiliate of Amazon, where you can order the book, which is priced at $27.50. Amazon also stocks the Somerset County book and my initial New Jersey Churchscape book—a survey of 225 of the the old churches and synagogues of the state published by Rutgers in 2000.
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Copyright © 2008
Frank L. Greenagel