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)
“The sturdy Irish arms that do the work are of more worth than oak or maple. Methinks I could look with equanimity upon a long street of Irish cabins, and pigs and children reveling in the genial Concord dirt; and I should still find my Walden Wood and Fair Haven in their tanned and happy faces.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We begin with friendships, and all our youth is a reconnoitering and recruiting of the holy fraternity they shall combine for the salvation of men. But so the remoter stars seem a nebula of united light, yet there is no group which a telescope will not resolve; and the dearest friends are separated by impassable gulfs.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Passing through here in 1795, Bishop Asbury commented, ‘The country improves in cultivation, wickedness, mills, and stills.’ Five years later, he held a meeting in the neighborhood and remarked that he thought most of the congregation had come to look at his wig.”
—Administration in the State of Sout, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Do not forsake your friend or the friend of your parent; do not go to the house of your kindred in the day of your calamity. Better is a neighbor who is nearby than kindred who are far away.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Proverbs 27:10.