Arch Street Friends Meeting House - Philadelphia, PA
N 39° 57.121 W 075° 08.768
18S E 487517 N 4422441
This is the oldest Friends Meeting House still in use in Philadelphia and the largest in the world. It was built in 1804 and enlarged in 1811. Monthly business meetings are conducted here — as they have since the 19th century. Architect Owen Biddle.
Waymark Code: WM38JW
Location: Pennsylvania, United States
Date Posted: 02/25/2008
Views: 40
Simplicity and peace envelope you when you step into the meeting house. It's grounds are simple but with beautiful flowers and trees making you feel you are in a courtyard.
The following information came directly from the Arch Street Friends Meeting House website (
visit link)
The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Friends living in Philadelphia, the southern half of New Jersey, Delaware and parts of Maryland is held here every spring.
Upon entering this Meeting House for the first time, a visitor unfamiliar with Quaker practices beholds a room with no pulpit; sunbeams rolling in but not through stained-glass windows; no religious icons hanging from the walls; no shrines are to be found at all. Instead, one steps into a great, square room filled with row after row of wooden pews, from all sides facing the center. A balcony supported by Doric columns spans three sides of the room. Plain are the windows and shutters; the floor is of unvarnished wood.
Dominant colors: brown, white. Simple. Silent.
Quakers, also known as the Society of Friends, have no written creed or fixed tenets of belief and no defined program of prayer. Music and sermonizing are absent during Worship Meetings. Further, Worship Meetings do not have a person in charge. Rather, Friends 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. In this room one is reminded of the words of the poet Marianne Moore, "The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence."