The early churches of New England hold a special place in the American consciousness, revered for their physical beauty, simplicity, and elegance and for their role in the early history of this country. Places of worship they were and are, but they are also icons of a particularly American sensibility and artistic vision.

Photographer Steve Rosenthal has traveled throughout the northeast capturing the gems of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and tracing the evolution of church styles from the early, dramatically simple meetinghouse form through the changing patterns of Greek and Gothic revivals. His photographs capture the intrinsic beauty of the architecture while creating a world of rich order and rational light. He has frozen in time the New England buildings that may soon be—or have already been—lost in a chaotic, contemporary world.