| Book Reviews | The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 130.3

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| Book Reviews | The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 130.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Reviews

Historic Sacred Places of Philadelphia. By Roger W. Moss, photographs by Tom Crane. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. xiii, 314p. Illustrations, glossary, bibliography, index. $34.95.)

A sequel to Moss and Crane's Historic Houses of Philadelphia (1998), this sumptuously illustrated large-format volume surveys churches and synagogues within the City of Philadelphia, with emphasis on ones erected before 1900 and reasonably accessible to visitors. Not intended as a detailed history of a building type, it combines relatively brief essays on fifty houses of worship (out of the sixteen thousand congregations in the city) with a short introduction that begins with William Penn's establishment of a colony offering "Freedom of their Consciences, as to their Religious Profession and Worship" (1701; p. 3) and then summarizes each denomination and its buildings over the next two hundred years. In this section, Moss includes destroyed buildings, ones erected in the twentieth century, and suburban examples, such as the Welsh St. David's Church in Radnor, Wright's Beth Shalom Synagogue in Elkins Park, and the Bryn Athyn Cathedral. In addition to Crane's beautiful photographs, this section includes a number of drawings connected with lost examples, though these, as well as older photographs and engravings, also appear in some of the individual building essays. This section is accompanied by substantial footnotes, whereas the documentation for the rest of the volume is provided only through a fairly detailed bibliography divided into a general section and sections devoted to specific buildings and their congregations.

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