Know Your Neighborhood: Arch Street Friends Meeting House 

Upon entering the Arch Street Friends Meeting House for the first time, a visitor finds a room with no pulpit; no stained-glass windows; no religious symbols hanging from the walls; no shrines are to be found at all. Instead, one steps into a square room filled with rows of wooden pews, from all sides facing the center. A balcony spans three sides of the room.  Windows and shutters are plain; the floor is of unvarnished wood.

Quakers, also known as the Society of Friends, have no written creed or fixed tenets and no defined program of prayer.  Music and sermonizing are absent during Worship Meetings. There is no one a person in charge. Rather, Quakers believe that God resides in each individual. Congregants enter the Meeting Room and settle down in silent waiting.  Any Friend who feels the "light" may share a message or prayer with others. 

The property the Meeting House sits on was first used for burial purposes under a deed issued by William Penn in 1701.  Many victims of the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 are buried here. Burials continued until 1803.

This is the oldest Friends Meeting House still in use in Philadelphia and the largest in the world.  The building has an entrance hall and three distinct sections. 

The east wing and center of the meetinghouse was built between 1803 and 1805 according to a design by the Quaker carpenter Owen Biddle, Jr.   The West Wing, added in 1811 to accommodate the women's Monthly Meeting, is today the room used for worship as described above. The interior of the east wing was renovated and a two-story addition behind the center building was completed in 1969.  The Meeting House's middle section serves as the site of Monthly Meetings and special events. In the East Wing of the building there are dioramas depicting the main events in the life of William Penn.

The meetinghouse was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971 and declared a National Historic Landmark in 2011.  The latter designation was as a consequence of the building being the only surviving documented work by Owen Biddle.

Late 1800's

                                                           1910 view & 2010

                                                                       1928

 1932

                                                                     Today