Carpenters' Hall

The meeting hall of the Carpenters' Company of the City and County of Philadelphia 

was designed by the city’s leading architect, Scottish-born Robert Smith (1722-1777). He was a member of the company, which had been founded in 1724, on the model of British craftsman’s guilds. Its purposes included offering instruction in the building trades, maintaining a library, and sustaining the community of builders—including providing aid in times of need.    

Smith presented his design in 1768, and the building was constructed in 1770-74. The work was not quite finished when it served as the meeting place for the First Continental Congress in September and October 1774. That assembly of delegates from twelve of the thirteen colonies was able to frame a unified response to the “Intolerable Acts” imposed by the British crown, thus laying the foundation for the Declaration of Independence two years later

In order to escape the tumult and noise of the growing city, Carpenters’ Hall was sited at the end of an alley in the center of a city block, where it was originally surrounded by other buildings. It is nonetheless a very ambitious example of middle Georgian public architecture. Built on a compact, equal-armed “Greek cross” plan, it is wrapped in colorful Flemish bond brickwork, with red “stretchers” and black “headers” (respectively, bricks that are laid lengthwise and endwise). The door and window frames are robustly proportioned, and the building is crowned by an elaborate cornice and a large central cupola.

The ground floor is now almost entirely occupied by a large meeting room, whose tile floor dates from the 1850s. This space was originally transected by a central corridor with meeting rooms on either side, and it was in one of these rooms that the Continental Congress met in 1774. 

As one of the largest buildings in the capital of the young nation, Carpenters’ Hall was valuable property, and the Carpenters’ Company rented it to a series of important tenants, including the Library Company (1773-1784), First Bank of the United States (1791-1797), Bank of Pennsylvania (1798-1800), U.S. Custom House (1801-1817),  Second Bank of the United States (1817-1826), and Franklin Institute (1826-1833). Thereafter, an auctioneer leased the building, until the Carpenters Company undertook its restoration and opened it to the public in 1857.

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