Holy Things and Profane: Anglican Parish Churches in Colonial Virginia

In this prize-winning book, Dell Upton interweaves architectural and cultural history to create a vivid new picture of colonial Virginia. Lavishly illustrated with photographs and drawings, the book examines the architecture, decoration, and furniture of Virginia`s Anglican churches and puts them in the context of eighteenth-century life and society.

"The finest study ever done of early American religious architecture."―Jon Butler, Journal of British Studies

"A splendid volume, thoroughly researched, well written, and handsomely produced. . . . The most satisfying and dexterous analysis of material culture to date."―Randall H. Balmer, Religious Studies Review

"A remarkable book about the construction and meaning of Anglican churches in colonial Virginia."―Lois Green Carr, American Historical Review

"Upton provides the general reader with a fascinating portrait of architecture as the physical embodiment of a certain time, place, and society without ignoring its technological or stylistic details and development."―Robin A. S. Haynes, American Quarterly

"Upton . . . answers many questions about early Virginia life with deep insight through a study of a building type that mixed high style architecture with the vernacular."―Dennis Domer, Journal of Architectural Education

Winner of the 1987 Alice Davis Hitchcock Award given by the Society of Architectural Historians, the 1987 John Hope Franklin Prize of the American Studies Association, and the 1987 Abbott Lowell Cummings Award of the Vernacular Architecture Forum.

Dell Upton is professor of architectural history at the University of California, Berkeley.

Upton interweaves architectural and cultural history to create a vivid new picture of colonial Virginia. Lavishly illustrated, this book examines the architecture, decoration, and furniture of Virginia's Anglican churches as expressions of eighteenth-century life and society.