New England Church

Howard Cook was born in the western Massachusetts town of Springfield and spent time around New England in the late 1920s. Although he depicted the church with a geometric simplicity characteristic of his prints of urban skyscrapers, he presented the church from a straightforward point of view rather than the bird's-eye or worm's-eye point of view he favored for images of the city. This ground-level perspective, the light that seems to emanate from the church, and the trees that bend to cradle it suggest the central place such buildings played as the heart of New England villages.