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:
“Dark accurate plunger down the successive knell
Of arch on arch, where ogives burst a red
Reverberance of hail upon the dead
Thunder like an exploding crucible!”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“What are you now? If we could touch one another,
if these our separate entities could come to grips,
clenched like a Chinese puzzle . . . yesterday
I stood in a crowded street that was live with people,
and no one spoke a word, and the morning shone.
Everyone silent, moving. . . . Take my hand. Speak to me.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)
“The slaves of power mind the cause they have to serve, because their own interest is concerned; but the friends of liberty always sacrifice their cause, which is only the cause of humanity, to their own spleen, vanity, and self-opinion.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)
“There is no ordinary Part of humane Life which expresseth so much a good Mind, and a right inward Man, as his Behaviour upon Meeting with Strangers, especially such as may seem the most unsuitable Companions to him: Such a Man when he falleth in the Way with Persons of Simplicity and Innocence, however knowing he may be in the Ways of Men, will not vaunt himself thereof; but will the rather hide his Superiority to them, that he may not be painful unto them.”
—Richard Steele (1672–1729)
“Ghosts, we hope, may be always with us—that is, never too far out of the reach of fancy. On the whole, it would seem they adapt themselves well, perhaps better than we do, to changing world conditions—they enlarge their domain, shift their hold on our nerves, and, dispossessed of one habitat, set up house in another. The universal battiness of our century looks like providing them with a propitious climate ...”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)