No. 10 January 2002
The authoritative source
on
early churches in New Jersey
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Fifth Baptist, Newark
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Feature
of the month
Mine is larger than yours
With the exception of the Quaker meeting
houses and some of the "bank front" churches in urban areas,
most mainstream Christian houses of worship have a tower or steeple. The
height of the steeples were sometimes twice or three times the nave, even
in churches built in the early years of the 19th century, but because
the steeple rose to a point, often above several elaborate and successively
smaller tiers, it did not have the mass of the square towers of later
years. In this issue we'll look at several square towers, especially ones
that seem disproportionally large in relation to the nave.
All
of the towers pictured here rise directly from the ground, and most are
set off to a side of the nave; indeed, the tower of the First Presbyterian
church in Morristown
[left] is connected only by an enclosed arcade
to the main body of the church. Most of the towers have a top tier with
multiple arches, and most also show tall slit windows reminiscent of the
defensive towers in the town of San Gimigiano, in Tuscany. The roof in
most cases is steeply pitched, although that would have been inappropriate
for the Renaissance style of the Immaculate Conception church in Montclair,
which
has a neo-classical cupola. [right]
Several have a distinctive band or distinctive course, which was common
to the period, probably to to break up the large expanse of brick or stone.
The shaft of the tower is a uniform width (or nearly so) from the ground
to the topmost tier, so the effect is one of mass rather than delicacy.
All of these churches were erected between 1892 and 1899, which suggests
it might have been an engineering issue that prevented earlier builders
from 
constructing
equally tall towers. But a more likely reason is the growing affluence
of some congregations during this decade, and the consequent desire to
make the church stand out—to give it a presence. No church records
suggest that congregations were in a contest to see who could build the
largest or tallest, but it appears that something like that was going
on, with each successive building a little taller or grander than the
previous one. 
Most
of these churches show the influence of architect Henry Hobson Richardson,
and the style is known as "Richardsonian Romanesque." The emphasis
is on overscaled entrances, chimneys, gables, and towers, generally in
an asymmetrical arrangement, and rusticated stone for trim was a common
feature.
A dramatic lateral expansion of the churches during this period provided
space for additional activities and functions, so it is doubtful that
the height of the 
tower
served an functional purpose, although I am told that several steeples
today hide cell phone transmission equipment; the rental income from the
phone company pays some of the expense of maintaining the tower. Old engravings
of the skylines of early cities often show a dozen or more steeples, 
much
the tallest buildings in town. By the end of the 19th century, that was
no longer true, as civic and commercial buildings often reached five stories
and more, and greatly exceeded that in the following decades. So the same
spirit of expansion and the limitless confidence of the era which prompted
the earliest skyscrapers might well have given rise to the ecclesiastical
towers. Bigger was apparently better, in religion as in commerce.
Top to bottom, the
churches are: St John the Evangelist, Jersey City, b.1892; First Presbyterian,
Morristown, b.1893; Church of the Immaculate Conception, Montclair, b.1892;
First Methodist Episcopal, Trenton, b.1894; St. Lucy's Church, Jersey
City, b.1895; Memorial Presbyterian, Dover, b.1899; First Reformed of
Raritan, Somerville, b.1896.
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© 2001 Frank L. Greenagel