PRICE, Benjamin Detwiler (1845-1922), an obscure architect from New Jersey who had a major influence on ecclesiastical design and church architecture in the United States and Canada. Beginning in the 1870's, he produced a catalogue of his church plans which was widely disseminated by the Methodist Episcopal Board of Church Extension. Simply entitled “Church Plans”, his modest picturesque Gothic designs for wood frame church buildings were offered by mail to church congregations in hundreds of locations in the eastern United States, and between 1876 and 1907 Price claimed to have sold more than 6,000 copies of his plans based on the designs shown in his printed pattern books. Undoubtedly his plans were utilized in several locations in Canada, but only one of his designs has been confirmed and identified in western Nova Scotia. Many of his American churches are still standing as of 2022, and several are now listed in the National Register of Historic Places, and can be found in states such as New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Indiana and as far away as Kansas.
Price was born in North Coventry, Pennsylvania on 3 September 1845 and began to work as an architect in Philadelphia. By 1875 he had decided to produce his own pattern book devoted exclusively to church designs, and he later collaborated with son Max C. Price, opening an office in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey (William Comstock, The Architect's Directory [New York], 1904-05, 58). He later moved to Florida and died at Punta Gorda, Fla. on 19 September 1922.
WENTWORTH, NOVA SCOTIA, Methodist Church, on Lake Road, near Wentworth, 1901 (Halifax Herald, 8 June 1901, 4. describing the new church “.....built from the plans of B.D. Price, architect of New Jersey”)