Friends meeting houses are places of worship for the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers. A "meeting" is the equivalent of a church congregation, and a "meeting house" is the equivalent of a church building.
Several Friends meetings were founded in Pennsylvania in the early 1680s. The Merion Friends Meeting House is the only surviving meeting house constructed before 1700. Thirty-two surviving Pennsylvania meeting houses were constructed before 1800, and are listed individually on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) or as contributing properties in historic districts. More than one hundred meeting houses constructed before 1900 were documented by the Historic American Buildings Survey, and published in Silent Witness: Quaker Meeting Houses in the Delaware Valley, 1695 to the Present (2002). Those that were involved in the Underground Railroad have been identified by the Federal NETWORK TO FREEDOM program (NTF).
One of the key tenets of the Religious Society of Friends is pacifism, adherence to the Peace Testimony. The "Free Quakers" were supporters of the American Revolutionary War, separated from the Society, and built their own meeting house in Philadelphia, at 5th & Arch Streets (1783).
In 1827, the Great Separation divided Pennsylvania Quakers into two branches, Orthodox and Hicksite. Many individual meetings also separated, but one branch generally kept possession of the meeting house. The two branches reunited in the 1950s.
Meeting houses
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Demolished meeting houses
| Name | Image | Founded | Constructed | Demolished | Notes | Location | Reference |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Centre Square Meeting House |  Shown at center of map |
1684 | 1685-1687 | Summer 1702 | Built on what is now the site of Philadelphia City Hall Salvaged materials from it were used to build the Bank Meeting House |
Broad and High (Market) Streets, Philadelphia | |
| Chester Friends Meeting House | 
|
1675 | 1687–1693 | c.1735 | William Penn attended meeting in Chester, probably in a private home, soon after his October 1682 arrival. |
3rd and Market Streets, Chester | |
| Evening Meeting House replaced on the same site by Bank Meeting House |
1682 | 1683-1685 | 1698 | A temporary, wood-frame building, built on Bank Hill, along the Delaware River. Also used for meetings of the Pennsylvania General Assembly and Provincial Council. |
West side of Front Street, between Race and Vine Streets, Philadelphia | ||
| Bank Meeting House | 
|
1703 | A large two-story, three-bay brick building, 50 ft (15 m) square, with separate entrances for men and women. Built using salvaged materials from the demolished Centre Square Meeting House. Sold 1791. |
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| Fourth Street Meeting House and School | 1763-1764 | 1859 | A two-story brick building, "76 feet front on Fourth street, 42 feet deep." Built beside the Friends Public School (for boys). A school for girls occupied the meeting house's second floor. |
East side of Fourth Street, between Chestnut and Sansom Streets, Philadelphia | PAB | ||
| Great Meeting House (High Street Meeting House) replaced on the same site by Greater Meeting House |
 Great Meeting House |
1695 | 1755 | Interior lighted by a roof lantern. | Southwest corner 2nd and Market Streets, Philadelphia | PAB | |
| Greater Meeting House |  Greater Meeting House |
1755 | 1812-1813 | A square, two-and-a-half-story brick building, 57 ft (17 m) per side, built by carpenter Abraham Carlisle and his apprentice Isaac Coates. Dismantled by carpenter John D. Smith, and used to build Twelfth Street Meeting House, 1813–1814. |
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| Green Street Meeting House Home of the North Monthly Meeting until c. 1828 |
1815-1816 | c.1970 | "The dimensions of the building were forty-seven by seventy-three feet." Home of the Monthly Meeting for the Northern District until the 1827-28 Hicksite/Orthodox schism. Discontinued as a meeting, 1914. Reopened as Friends Neighborhood House, a settlement house serving immigrant communities. |
Southeast corner 4th and Green Streets, Philadelphia | |||
| Key's Alley Meeting House Home of the North Monthly Meeting, 1790–1816 |
1790 | Dimensions: "68 by 50 feet, … an additional apartment of brick 40 by 45 feet on the north side of the building, for a Monthly Meeting room." Home of the North Meeting until 1816, when it moved to Green Street Meeting House. The former meeting house became a Philadelphia public school. |
North side of New Street, between Front and 2nd Streets, Philadelphia | ||||
| North Meeting House | 1838 | c.1968 | Built for Orthodox Friends who separated from the Hicksite Green Street Meeting House. "The dimensions of the building were 118 by 65 feet, with a height of 30 feet." Discontinued as a meeting, 1914. Sold 1918; became a community center and playground. |
Southwest corner 6th and Noble Streets, Philadelphia | |||
| Pine Street Meeting House (Hill Meeting House) |
1747 | 1752-1753 | Land donated by Samuel Powel. "The meeting agrees that a brick house of 60 feet front, and 43 feet deep shall be built on said lot." A two-story, three-bay brick building, with separate entrances for men and women. Robert Smith, builder |
South side of Pine Street, between Front and 2nd Streets, Philadelphia | PAB |
Notes
- Charles II of England granted a charter to William Penn for the Pennsylvania Colony in 1681, in repayment of a large debt to Penn's late father. Penn, a Quaker, quickly drew up plans to divide the land within the colony, but in a way that encouraged settlement rather than real estate speculation. Initially, Pennsylvania was a predominantly, but not exclusively, Quaker colony, with Huguenots, Jews, and other persecuted religious minorities among the settlers. Penn was one of about sixty passengers who arrived at Philadelphia aboard The Welcome, in October 1682. It is estimated that more than 2,000 European settlers arrived by ship in the first two years of the colony.
- "We are now laying the foundation of a new brick meeting-house in the Centre (sixty feet long and about forty feet broad), and hope to soon have it up, there being many hearts and hands at work that will do it." — Robert Turner to William Penn, August 3, 1685.
- "Friends were long accustomed to hold night meetings on the Sabbath. Their house on the Bank Hill, on Front Street, was at first called Evening Meeting because chiefly made for such a convenience when that at Centre Square was too far off."
- " large meeting-house, fifty feet long and thirty-eight broad, also going on in the front of the river for an evening meeting." — Robert Turner to William Penn, August 3, 1685.
- The Evening Meeting House was located on the west side of Front Street, at or slightly north of the present crossing of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge.
- The ministers' galleries from the Bank Meeting House survive at the Sadsbury Meeting House in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
- "It was surmounted, in the centre of its four-angled roof, by a raised frame of glass-work so constructed as to let light down into the meeting below, after the manner of the former Burlington meeting-house."
- A floor joist from the Greater Meeting House is initialed and dated: "AC + IC 1755," spelled out in nailheads.
References
- List of passengers aboard The Welcome, from The Welcome Society of Pennsylvania.
- Cary Hutto, "What ship carried William Penn and some of the first settlers to Pennsylvania across the Atlantic?" Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
- Tyson, Rae. "Our First Friends, The Early Quakers". www.phmc.state.pa.us. Retrieved 12 January 2018.
- ^ Friend Meeting House Survey, Historic American Buildings Survey, 2002, notes used for Silent Witness, available at Friends Historic Library at Swarthmore College.
- Historic American Buildings Survey (2002). Silent Witness: Quaker Meeting Houses in the Delaware Valley, 1695 to the Present. p. 56.
- HABS No. PA-6657, "Abington (Orthodox) Friends Meetinghouse"
- O'Bannon, Patrick W. (1986). "NRHP Nomination Form - Bristol Historic District" (PDF).
- National Historic Landmark Nomination, Buckingham Friends Meeting House
- Seventy-Seventh Annual Report of the Managers of the Apprentices' Library of Philadelphia. Philadelphia: Spangler & Davis. 1897. pp. 7–8.
- Bill Bolger; David G. Orr & Catherine LaVoie (February 3, 1998). "National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination: Merion Friends Meeting House" (pdf). National Park Service.
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires|journal=(help) and Accompanying 9 photos, exterior and interior, from 1987. (32 KB) - "National Historic Landmarks & National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania". CRGIS: Cultural Resources Geographic Information System. Archived from the original (Searchable database) on 2007-07-21. Retrieved 2016-05-31. Note: This includes Mirras, Helen Reichart (December 1969). "National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form: Plymouth Friends Meetinghouse" (PDF). Retrieved 2012-05-24.
- HABS No. PA-1048, "Reading Friends Meeting"
- HABS No. PA-6651, "Sadsbury Friends Meeting House"
- Charles Hough, "It's all about the trusses," April 2008 lecture, from The George School.
- HABS No. PA-1944, "Twelfth Street Meeting House"
- HABS No. PA-6706, "Upper Providence Friends Meetinghouse"
- HABS No. PA-6228, "West Grove Friends Meeting House"
- HABS No. PA-6664, "West Philadelphia Friends Meeting House"
- J. W. Lippincott, "Early Meetinghouses of Friends," Friends' Intelligencer and Journal, vol. 46, no. 29 (September 20, 1889), pp. 452-54.
- ^ J. Thomas Scharf and Thompson Westcott, History of Philadelphia, Volume 2 (Philadelphia: L. H. Everts & Co., 1884), p. 1242.
- ^ J. W. Lippincott, "Early Meetinghouses of Friends," Friends' Intelligencer and Journal, vol. 46, no. 30 (September 27, 1889), pp. 467-69.
- William McKoy, Reminiscences (1829), quoted in John Fanning Watson, Annals of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1830).
- J. Thomas Scharf and Thompson Westcott, History of Philadelphia, Volume 1 (Philadelphia: L. H. Everts & Co., 1888), p. 121.
- ^ Seth Beeson Hinshaw, The Evolution of Quaker Meeting Houses in North America, 1670-2000 (master's thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 2001).(PDF)
- ^ J. W. Lippincott, "Early Meetinghouses of Friends," Friends' Intelligencer and Journal, vol. 46, no. 31 (October 3, 1889), pp. 486-87.
- 4th Street Meeting House and School, from PAB.
- John Fanning Watson, Annals of Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1830), vol. 1, p. 355.
- Great Meeting House, from PAB.
- J. Thomas Scharf and Thompson Westcott, History of Philadelphia, Volume 2 (Philadelphia: L. H. Everts & Co., 1888), p. 1260.
- ^ "The Passing of the North Meeting-House, Philadelphia," Quaker History, vol. 8, no. 3 (November 1918), pp. 106-08.
- J. Thomas Scharf and Thompson Westcott, History of Philadelphia, Volume 2 (Philadelphia: L. H. Everts & Co., 1888), p. 1250.
- Pine Street Meeting, from PAB.
Further reading
- Matlack, T. Chalkey (1938). Brief Historical Sketches concerning Friends' Meetings of the Past and Present with special reference to Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. Moorestown, NJ.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) Available at the Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College. - Futhey, John Smith; Cope, Gilbert (1881). History of Chester County, Pennsylvania, with Genealogical and Biographical Sketches. Philadelphia: L. H. Everts. pp. 782. Retrieved August 17, 2016.
See also
External links
- QuakerMeetings.com, "Monthly Meetings in North America: A Quaker Index" - a database of the history of meetings (rather than meeting houses)
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| See also | Lists of religious worship places in the United States |