Reunified, Rebuilt, Enlarged, or Rehabilitated: Deciphering Friends’ Complex Attitudes toward Their Meeting Houses

Figure 1.

Germantown Friends Meeting House, Philadelphia, Penn.; date stone, from the HABS drawing, Sheet 3 of 3, 1999; HABS No. PA-6654. This complex date stone provides clues as to Friends’ attitudes regarding the importance of their meeting house.

Standing in one of the oldest neighborhoods of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Germantown Friends Meeting House is among the more recently built of those structures associated with the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends.¹ As the walls were being raised, Friends placed a date stone over the east entryway (Figure 1). It is actually a composite of date stones that together commemorate the three structures that have stood on this site since the turn of the eighteenth century. The top portion is the date stone from the previous 1812 meeting house and acknowledges the early structure it replaced by giving both an “Old” date of 1705 and a “New” date of 1812. Below this is the date stone for the current structure, indicating that it was “RE-BUILT [in] 1869.” Together they form much more than a commemorative piece; the date stones reveal the complex and at times even conflicting attitudes that Friends have about their meeting houses and their significance. Examining the stones more carefully shows first the part of the inscription that reads, “Old, ANNO 1705.” This refers to longevity. It informs us that, despite the fact that the current structure dates only to 1869, Friends of Germantown Meeting have gathered here since 1705. It speaks not just of the vitality of the Germantown Quaker community, but of their long-standing devotion to the tenets by which they live. The “New, 1812” part of the inscription recognizes the second meeting house, but by juxtaposing it with the old date, it also indicates that the tendency of Friends to proudly acknowledge more than one hundred years of fellowship was already well established by the early nineteenth century. After all, meeting houses then served as the center of both religious and secular life.² Due to characteristic plain styling, meeting houses have conferred upon Friends, since the late seventeenth century, a distinct identity within the greater Philadelphia landscape. First as colonial proprietors and later as religious leaders and social activists, Friends of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (PYM) have been at the forefront of activities to promote liberty of conscience and social justice for more than three centuries. Thus for many, the meeting houses still serve as tangible reminders of Friends’ vast contributions to the history and development of the region, the state, and the nation. Finally, “Re-built, 1869” is the dedication for the current structure and is of interest because it appears to reflect the high regard that Friends place on the economical use of resources—in this case, the rebuilding or reuse of the old meeting house.

The impulse to build new meeting houses from parts of the old, or to build on to, rather than replace, old meeting houses—as is implied by the term “re-built”—is a longstanding tradition among Friends of the PYM. While there is potential economic benefit to be gained from the reuse of materials, the degree to which Friends pursued this building pattern suggests that the practice was as much grounded in religious and philosophical beliefs as it was in the promise of financial savings. However, to suggest that such reuse is about acknowledging the significance of the original structure—that, as other Christian faiths treat pieces of the True Cross, Friends have traditionally attached sentimental value to meeting houses—would be a misconception. In only one isolated and fairly recent example does it appear that Friends of the PYM have commemorated parts salvaged from a venerable meeting house. On the contrary, it would seem that the impropriety of placing undue importance on material objects precludes Friends from valuing their meeting houses beyond their ability to facilitate meetings for worship and for business.³

Interestingly enough, however, the current Germantown Meeting House was not “re-built” from parts of the previous structure...