As a new faculty member at Franklin & Marshall College, Kostis Kourelis immediately grasped the teaching possibilities Lancaster city has to offer.

So when Kourelis, an assistant professor of art history, was putting together a seminar for the spring 2010 semester, that potential was foremost in his mind.

"The idea is that Lancaster becomes a laboratory," said Kourelis, who specializes in medieval architecture.

"And churches are the obvious place to start," he said.

"They're a spectacular collection of monuments" that show evidence of larger architectural movements — including Georgian, Romanesque Revival and Gothic Revival, Kourelis said.

The students in his course, "Lancaster: Architecture of Faith," are taking an in-depth look at the churches, synagogues and other religious buildings in the city. They're posting their observations and research on a blog, lancasterarchitecture.wordp....

In Kourelis' view, the blog is already the best database of religious architecture in the city, and a great resource for the public to tap into.

The catalog of religious buildings and sites the class is studying came from a compilation by LancasterHistory.org, Kourelis said.

The book lists more than 120 of these, including cemeteries, he said.

The 19 students in "Lancaster: Architecture of Faith" are given sectors of the city in which they're to visit five or so locations.

In some cases, the sacred structures have lost their original congregations and are home to new denominations, Kourelis said. An in others, the site may have been built and rebuilt on over the centuries, he said.

After each visit, the students post a blog entry on what they've observed, including comments on the overall architectural quality, Kourelis said.

Their final assignment is to write a paper on one of the houses of worship, with the goal of discovering "something we don't know about it," he said.

The students must attend at least one service as part of their research. The finished projects, and progress reports, also will be posted online.

One cold, rainy morning in February, Kourelis' class took a field trip downtown to historic St. James Episcopal Church, which was erected in 1818.

Before his students arrived, Kourelis talked about the city's religious architectural legacy.

A number of Lancaster churches — especially those constructed in the last half of the 19th century — were part of the Gothic Revival movement, he said.

A few telltale features of that are ribbed vaulting and pointed arches, Kourelis explained.

But St. James, he said, is more an example of the Romanesque Revival style.

The large, semicircular apse; the dog-tooth frieze in the interior; the brick corbelling in the exterior; and the medieval-looking iron hinges on the arched doors are among the architectural details that identify St. James as Romanesque Revival, Kourelis said.

Much of the architectural movements of the 19th century were a reaction to modernity, a turning back to the medieval past, he said.

"All these churches are playing with history," Kourelis said; they represent "a synthesis of life and art."

And like other religious architecture in the city, St. James is far from monolithic. The Mercer tiles in the apse, Kourelis noted, are a prime example of Arts-and-Crafts influence.

When the students showed up, he pointed out the stained-glass windows — two of which are by Tiffany — and explained that they really aren't stained glass by the strict definition.

"But they're still works of art,"Kourelis said.

Asked why she decided to take the course, Brittney Fairman, a senior government major from western Pennsylvania, said the topic of religious architecture intrigued her.

For her project, Fairman's researching St. Joseph Catholic Church.

Nora Theodore, a freshman from midcoast Maine, said she's interested in the environmental impact of early 20th century churches.

While gazing around the nave of St. James, Fairman noted that the church seemed to lack an abundance of interior light.

Kourelis told her she had hit on a key point. While St. James is Romanesque Revival, he said, Gothic Revival churches have "more windows and less wall."

"This is intentionally dark," Kourelis said.

But that, he said, is part of its beauty.