Italian Presbyterian? - Newark
The Salem churchscape
This month's issue consists of excerpts from the initial chapters of the just-published book on the churchscape of Salem County. The 244 page book covers all 51 of the surviving houses of worship erected before 1900 and three long chapters on the early settlement, religion, architecture and construction. It is the seventh book in the series on the state's churchscapes.
Roughly half the churches erected in Salem County during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries survive. Many were razed when the congregation flourished and a larger building was required. A few burned down, and some were sold off and dismantled, carted away to be used in a barn or residence elsewhere. A few were simply abandoned and allowed to fall to pieces. This is an examination of what remains. It is an attempt to record and interpret why the meetinghouses, churches and synagogues look the way they do. Although the scope of this study is limited to Salem County, the subject matter and many of the generalizations would not be atypical for large parts of the state, indeed, for much of the mid-Atlantic region. Except for the Quaker meetinghouses, the churches here are not much different from scores elsewhere in New Jersey, mostly erected in the mid-to-late decades of the nineteenth century.
For the first 50 years the Quaker settlers were the only denomination that met regularly, although historical geographer Peter Wacker calls attention to a Moravian mission to the early Swedish settlers, and it is probable that occasional Lutheran services were held in Penns Neck by 1703. A few early immigrants were French Huguenots, others may have had some attachment to the Church of England, or to the Presbyterian or Baptist denominations, but they were of insufficient numbers to organize a church. Except for the Presbyterians and Baptists in what became Cumberland County, between 1675 and 1722 there was no competing religion in the county. If we ignore (for the moment) for the presence of blacks and the remnants of the Swedish and Finnish settlements, Salem was a monoculture for its first 50 years. [Hancock's Bridge meetinghouse above]
It appears that religious and cultural practices, such as the prohibition against “marrying out,” eventually had an enervating impact. Quaker membership seems to have dropped off significantly before the Revolution, when its opposition to Independence caused general antipathy, and its influence was far less pervasive in the community by the end of the eighteenth century.
What we see today is an historic nineteenth-century churchscape, mostly Methodist, and therefore mostly smallish, wooden-frame meetinghouse-style churches. [Union Grove Methodist pictured] The county is not rich in the Gothic idiom of the Anglicans and Catholics, nor of the Presbyterian and Reformed churches that found an acceptable alternative to Gothic in the round-arch windows and false arcades of the Romanesque. Only the city of Salem itself has any church that might be considered “grand,” and even it might not be so regarded if it were found in Newark, Jersey City or even Trenton.
As we shall see in the following chapter, the early decades of the nineteenth century were a period of considerable religious ferment—great revivals and camp meetings, the development and expansion among the Methodists of a system of circuits and itinerant preachers that was emulated by the Baptists, and a general rising affluence as the state gradually emerged from the ravages of the Revolutionary War. The hiatus in church building in the period leading up to what is now called the Second Great Awakening can probably be best explained by the slow growth in population. Certainly there was no dearth of preachers. The great Cane Ridge Camp Meeting of 1801 stimulated the emergence of new sects and invigorated Methodist and Baptist hierarchies to greater efforts. But in a county where low density and few passable roads hindered organizing efforts, incipient congregations met in homes, schoolhouses, even the shops of wheelwrights for years.
By 1860 many congregations in the flourishing towns of Salem could choose from a variety of popular architectural styles—Greek Revival, Gothic, Romanesque Revival , and they could dress up a simple frame meetinghouse with manufactured brackets, cornices, columns, pilasters and decorative lintels and hood molds. They were no longer limited by the artisan skills available in the immediate area. Manufacturing and low-cost transpor-tation brought high design even to modest congregations. That many of the churches look alike might be because an ambitious builder sold several congregations on the merit and economy of his plan, or because one congregation admired the church of another and asked a builder to duplicate it. Or because the denominational authority made available inexpensive plans in an effort to upgrade the general quality of the architecture. But after the Civil War it was no longer because that was the only kind of building the men of the congregation knew how to erect with the skills and materials at hand.
Changes in liturgy, or the influence of a dominant churchman, benefactor or architect often helped to shape the design of a church, and the social and cultural values that obtained at different periods clearly had an impact on what we see today. So the term churchscape is a label coined in an attempt to describe a culture with some common elements, and therefore may help to explain why the churches of an area look the way they do.
Often there were several forces in play, and in all likelihood, some differences of opinion among the congregation and its building committee, as we know from the extended debates over the location of the Friends meetinghouse in Hancock’s Bridge. In the absence of the minutes of those debates and discussions we cannot know with any certainty why a congregation decided upon a particular plan and style, but we can note the general trends for the religious architecture in a region, and in that manner we might make some cautious inferences about the weight given to specific features, and to the outlook and assumptions that underlie them. The inclusion of additional meeting rooms beyond those strictly needed for Sunday school reveals something about what the congregation expected of a church—no longer just sermons and sacraments. [Canton Methodist pictured] The placement of the pulpit, the size of the rostrum, and the seating arrangements—a ramped amphitheatre plan with aisles radiating out from the central platform, for example, suggest something of the change in the liturgy itself that were salient in the late nineteenth century. These, of course, are not simply architectural issues, but matters affecting the nature of the services and how the congregation viewed itself.
I will outline a case for an interpretation that construction of a church in Salem County after the ascendency of the Friends had lost its momentum in the mid-eighteenth century was driven largely by the activity of the circuit-riding Methodist preachers. By the 1850s other forces were afoot—a rising affluence, a merchant class in the large towns, and in general a popular culture that expressed itself as refinement. In the African and Jewish communities, financial resources severely constrained the architectural expression of their piety. There were liturgical changes, too, as well as new manufacturing and construction methods which helped to shape the churchscape of the county.
Most of the churches in the state can be reasonably accommodated within just a few building traditions. There are some anomalies, like the Ahavas Achim synagogue in Norma, which seems to have been designed with functionality as a basis rather than how a traditional Jewish house of worship should look to the passerby. With only a few exceptions the later churches in the county are not much different from the earlier ones—most are found in the smaller towns of the county and therefore do not reflect any marked accumulation of capital such as might be seen in Salem or Bridgeton. They exhibit a confidence that traditional forms are entirely satisfactory, particularly when augmented by inexpensive manufactured brackets and drip molds. Most of the additions and expansions of these buildings occurred in the twentieth century. Methodist congregations in Quinton, Salem and Woodstown built substantial brick churches that are likely based on plans from the Methodist Board of Church Extension, and their twins can be found all over the country. In Daretown and Elmer, end of the century churches suggest some developments—the use of light and open space in religious architecture—that will flower in the next century. It was not simply a change in wealth, liturgy or even technology as much as a greater sensibility about how a church should serve its congregation rather than what it should look like—a sensibility that insisted on Sunday schools, meeting rooms and even social halls with kitchen facilities.
Although the generously-sized Quaker meetinghouse on Broadway in Salem once had a dominant presence by location, quality of construction and scale, today it recedes into the background. Its setback is greater than other buildings on Broadway. Mature trees and shrubbery obscure it to all who don’t pause to examine it. The major crossroads in town is now two blocks west, one corner occupied by a substantial Baptist church with an imposing multi-tiered tower. A block-and-a-half north of that intersection stands the high-Victorian First Presbyterian church, whose multiple pinnacles and dramatically-pointed spire assures a visual presence of the church that can be appreciated from afar. A half block north of it stands the venerable but modestly-sized Gothic church of the Episcopalians, on the fringe of a neighborhood that remains more residential than commercial. The Catholic church is several blocks removed from the central area, and the African church much further still. Prominence and the proximity to Salem’s major intersection reflects the hierarchy that was dominant in the mid-nineteenth century.
Before that time, the Quakers were the center of the social-political-cultural life of the town—the arbiters of political life, status and standing. The arrival of Baptists, Presbyterians and Anglicans before the American Revolution eventually brought new churches of a more contemporary design, and also signaled a change in the social and civic center of the town. Relegation of the economic and socially-marginal Methodist, African and Catholic congregations to the periphery is consistent with the situation that obtained in the first decades of the century. About mid-century, when the Methodists attained numerical superiority in the county and state, they established a presence at the center of town with construction of the stylish and physically-imposing Broadway Methodist church, opposite the Baptist church.
Thus, the mid-nineteenth century social landscape in Salem is suggested by the siting of the houses of worship, which succeeded but did not displace the markers of Quaker dominance. The large Friends burial ground, dominated by the 250 year-old Salem Oak, remains on Broadway, a reminder to those who know anything of the town’s history that it is something other than a well-tended public park.
Interestingly, in 1892 the First Methodist church chose to build a new, and much grander building at its original location when it erected its present building. It had been their location since 1784, and the size of the new church would dispel any doubts about the Methodists’ presence. When the Hicksite schism rent the Society of Friends in the 1820s, the minority faction of orthodox Quakers built a smaller but more elegant meetinghouse virtually opposite the old Quaker burial grounds on Broadway. Certainly an attempt to reassert their primacy as the original Friends society. An informed reading of the churchscape reveals much about the social, economic and cultural history of an area.
Recent Book: A Brief History of the Religious Architecture of New Jersey 1703-1900 has been published and is available at Amazon. It is loaded with full-color illustrations representing the significant architectural designs in the state. It is authoritative but not scholarly in style, and was written for the average reader with an interest in the old meeting-houses, churches and synagogues of the state. Here's a direct link to its page on Amazon. You can find out more about it at the Wooden Nail Press website.