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:

    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)

    We, the soldiers who have returned from battles stained with blood; we who have seen our relatives and friends killed before our eyes; we who have attended their funerals and cannot look in the eyes of their parents; we who have come from a land where parents bury their children; we who have fought against you, the Palestinians—we say to you today, in a loud and a clear voice: enough of blood and tears. Enough.
    Yitzhak Rabin (1922–1995)

    When one drinks with a friend, a thousand cups are not enough, but when there is no meeting of minds, half a sentence can be too much.
    Chinese proverb.

    Till having failed at hugger-mugger farming
    He burned his house down for the fire insurance
    And spent the proceeds on a telescope
    To satisfy a lifelong curiosity
    About our place among the infinities.
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)