Frankford Friends Meeting House is a historic Quaker meeting house

Friends meeting house

A Friends meeting house is a meeting house of the Religious Society of Friends , where meeting for worship may be held.-History:Quakers do not believe that meeting for worship should take place in any special place. They believe that "where two or three meet together in my name, I am there among...

 in the Frankford

Frankford, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Frankford is a large and important neighborhood in the lower Northeast section of Philadelphia situated about six miles northeast of Center City. Although its borders are vaguely defined, the neighborhood is bounded roughly by the original course of Frankford Creek, now roughly Adams to Aramingo...

 neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

. Its oldest parts having been built in 1775–1776, it is significant as the oldest surviving meeting house in Philadelphia.

Located at the corner of Unity and Waln Streets, it is now used also as a community center.

The Friends meeting

The Quaker meeting here was known from its establishment by the Philadelphia Quarterly Meeting in 1683 as "Tacony" (after a nearby creek

Frankford Creek

Frankford Creek is a minor tributary of the Delaware River in southeast Pennsylvania. The stream originates as Tookany Creek at Hill Crest in Cheltenham Township and meanders eastward, then southeastward, throughout Cheltenham Township, until a sharp bend near the Philadelphia border at Lawncrest,...

), then as "Oxford" (after the township in which it lay), then as "Frankford", then as "Unity" (to distinguish it from another Frankford meeting nearby on Orthodox Street). It is affiliated with the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting

Philadelphia Yearly Meeting

Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, or simply Philadelphia Yearly Meeting or PYM, is the central organizing body for Quaker meetings in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, area....

.

The historic building

The original portion of the Frankford Preparative Friends Meeting House was built in 1775–76, making it the oldest Friends meeting house in Philadelphia. Although meeting houses were constructed in the region as early as the city's founding in the 1680s, most were replaced by the nineteenth century. Frankford Meeting House was originally erected as a single-cell, three-by-two-bay structure. In 1811–12, a smaller two-bay-wide section was added to accommodate the growing meeting. The addition also adapted the structure to a programmatic change that occurred among the Quakers during the late eighteenth century. Evidence indicates that a partition located to the east of the central doorway once divided the original single cell into two apartments. The smaller size of the eastern women's apartment reflected the English program whereby Friends met in a single room for worship, and then in separate apartments for gender-specific business meetings. By the late eighteenth century, American Friends began meeting on separate sides of a partition for worship and business, with the partition lowered for the latter. The new arrangement required two same-sized apartments and led to the development of the two-cell structure that became a standard for Friends meeting house design for nearly a century. Frankford's 1811–12 addition made the meeting house conform to the newer program by creating same-sized rooms, reflecting a critical point in the evolution of meeting house design. It is one of the few surviving examples of a single-cell form altered to accommodate separate space for women's meetings.

Frankford Meeting House is also of interest for its unusual mix of building materials. A refined treatment of Flemish-bond brick with glazed headers was used in constructing the facades facing the street. The use of locally quarried rubble stone gives a more vernacular appearance to the two remaining facades, including the south front. The utilization of both brick and stone was probably a function of economy. Materials from the previous meeting house were reused, minimizing the need for additional (more costly) brick, a practice indicative of Quaker thrift.

External links

• Listing at Philadelphia Architects and Buildings
• Listing, photographs, and drawings at the Historic American Buildings Survey
  Historic American Buildings Survey
  The Historic American Buildings Survey , Historic American Engineering Record , and Historic American Landscapes Survey are programs of the National Park Service established for the purpose of documenting historic places. Records consists of measured drawings, archival photographs, and written...
  
  
• Brief history of the meeting at Bryn Mawr College
  Bryn Mawr College
  Bryn Mawr College is a women's liberal arts college located in Bryn Mawr, a community in Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania, ten miles west of Philadelphia. The name "Bryn Mawr" means "big hill" in Welsh....