Race Street Friends Meetinghouse - Philadelphia, PA
N 39° 57.346 W 075° 09.898
18S E 485909 N 4422860
The Race Street Friends Meetinghouse is a historic and still active Quaker meeting house. It is located at 1515 Cherry Street. It was built in 1856. There is a complex of offices in this building which have various Quaker purposes.
Waymark Code: WM3B4H
Location: Pennsylvania, United States
Date Posted: 03/08/2008
Views: 60
The group that meets here to share meeting for worship is called the Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting. Meeting for Worship is held first day 11:00 AM but July & August only, 11:00 AM. They have been meeting under this name since 1956. This meeting house was built in 1856
The most important detail of this waymark (besides the meeting house) is this is the national office for the American Friends Service Committee. Also found here is a Quaker information center, the Friends World Committee, Quaker education center, and the Friends Center Corporation. Finally, the Philadelphia yearly meeting meets here annually.
There is a statue to the left of the main entrance which adorns the front yard. It is a statue of Mary Dyer. It was a gift from the Fairmount Park Art Association and erected by the Friends Center Corporation in cooperation with the redevelopment authority of Philadelphia in May 1975. Mary Dyer was a Quaker witness for religious freedom. She was hanged in Boston Common in 1660.
If you like the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission blue marker program than you will love this place. There are two of these historic signs out front. The first one is Civilian Public Service and the other, America Friends Service Committee. They are already waymarked so have at it.
Address
1515 Cherry Street
Philadelphia PA 19102-1403
(215) 241 7260
8:30 AM - 4:30 PM Mondays through Thursdays
I also found some information on this website. "Much of the story of Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting is also the story of Philadelphia Quakers for the last two centuries. The meeting came into existence with the merger of Philadelphia Monthly Meeting (Race Street) and Twelfth Street Meeting at the time of the reconciliation of the Hicksite and Orthodox branches of Quakerism in 1956. Margaret Bacon, writing about her own meeting, tells us about these two meetings, their schools and meetinghouses, the development of Friends organizations, and their social action that responded to the events around them, that bring us up to the present time."
For the complete history of this meeting and of Philadelphia's Friends history click HERE. Rather than just copy and paste, you can read it from the original source.