The Suburban Church: Modernism and Community in Postwar America By Gretchen Buggeln

Abstract

Every suburb in Indiana has them, often by the half-dozen: the inexpensive, intimate, brick, stone, and concrete churches erected during the building, and church-going, boom that followed World War II. They are not vernacular in the strict sense, since most of them were architect-designed and professionally built, but they are so common as to be almost invisible. Gretchen Buggeln’s warm, generous study brings these churches into focus, not only through her analysis of their design but through a careful examination of the hopes and dreams of the young congregations that sacrificed not only cash, but often sweat and tears, to build them.