Arch Street Friends Meeting House

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:

    Prayer is the fair and radiant daughter of all the human virtues, the arch connecting heaven and earth, the sweet companion that is alike the lion and the dove; and prayer will give you the key of heaven. As pure and as bold as innocence, as strong as all things are that are entire and single, this fair and invincible queen rests on the material world; she has taken possession of it; for, like the sun, she casts about it a sphere of light.
    HonorĂ© De Balzac (1799–1850)

    If you would learn to write, ‘t is in the street you must learn it. Both for the vehicle and for the aims of fine arts you must frequent the public square. The people, and not the college, is the writer’s home.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    I hate the whole race.... There is no believing a word they say—your professional poets, I mean—there never existed a more worthless set than Byron and his friends for example.
    Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke Wellington (1769–1852)

    Sir Francis, Sir Francis, Sir Francis is come;
    —Unknown. Upon Sir Francis Drake’s Return from His Voyage about the World, and the Queen’s Meeting Him (l. 1)

    In America a woman loses her independence for ever in the bonds of matrimony. While there is less constraint on girls there than anywhere else, a wife submits to stricter obligations. For the former, her father’s house is a home of freedom and pleasure; for the latter, her husband’s is almost a cloister.
    Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)