New York/Litchfield, Connecticut

Litchfield, Connecticut

While on a family ski jaunt to the Berkshires we stopped in Litchfield, Connecticut for dinner, and I walked across the town green to photograph the church above. It was 9 degrees fahrenheit so I didn't spend a lot of time on this.

I've long been interested in beginning a new project with the working title of the New Religious Landscape. It would primarily focus on the phenonmenon of megachurches and the surrounding environment. New England churches serve as a reference point--classical, unadorned, dignified statements usually found in the center of villages--that point to attitudes about community, architecture and planning, and the place of religion in society.

This church in Litchfield is actually a 1929 reconstruction of the original, which was built a hundred years before. The earlier building was replaced when religious fashion changed later in the 19th century. It was only well into the 20th century when public taste began to value colonial and neo-colonial architecture that the original design was returned to its former prominence in the center of town.