Arch Street Friends Meeting House, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is a Friends Meeting House of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). It is the oldest meetinghouse of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) still in use in the United States.
Pennsylvania founder and Quaker William Penn donated the land to the Society in 1693 as a burial ground for members. The meetinghouse was built between 1803 and 1805 atop the graveyard and then enlarged in 1811, when the west wing was added to accommodate the Women's Monthly Meeting. The original east wing now houses exhibits on the life of Penn, and the west wing is used for meetings for worship.
Notable members have included abolitionist Lucretia Mott. Edward Hicks, the noted painter and cousin of Elias Hicks, attended the yearly meeting.
The meeting house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971 and declared a National Historic Landmark in 2011.
Read more about Arch Street Friends Meeting House: Notable Interments
Famous quotes containing the words arch, street, friends, meeting and/or house:
“Men seem anxious to accomplish an orderly retreat through the centuries, earnestly rebuilding the works behind them, as they are battered down by the encroachments of time; but while they loiter, they and their works both fall prey to the arch enemy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“For now the moon with friendless light carouses
On hill and housetop, street and marketplace,
Men will plunge, mile after mile of men,
To crush this lucent madness of the face....”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“I set it down as a fact that if all men knew what each said of the other, there would not be four friends in the world.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“We would not be interested in human beings if we did not have the hope of someday meeting someone worse off than ourselves.”
—E.M. Cioran (b. 1911)
“The mortgage is still in our name but, increasingly, the house is theirs. One diaper, one vote.”
—Fred G. Gosman (20th century)