Race Street Meeting House

The Race Street Meeting House was built in 1856 to serve the growing “Hicksite” faction of the Philadelphia Quakers. Inspired by Elias Hicks (1748-1830), they had split from the “Orthodox” Friends in 1827. Hicksites valued “Inward Light”—personal sensibility—above Christian scripture, and they were generally more active in political and civic affairs.

The Hicksites moved out of the Arch Street Meeting House and swiftly constructed their own home at Fifth and Cherry Streets. When this became too small, they built the present building at Fifteenth and Race Streets—then at the western edge of the city.

The work of builders George Chandlee, Nathan Smedley, and William Eyre, the simple four-square brick building is in the same plain, timeless style as the Race Street Meeting, erected a half century earlier. Inside were two airy, two-story meeting rooms, 80 feet wide and 36 feet tall. The northern meeting room was designed to house the Monthly Meeting and the Women's Yearly Meeting, and the southern room accommodated the Men's Yearly Meeting until 1926, when men and women ceased to meet separately. It was then divided into smaller meeting rooms and offices.  

Women had achieved equality with men in the Race Street Meeting by the 1870s, and they led the Meeting in campaigning for the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, and world peace. These leaders included abolitionist and women's activist Lucretia Mott (1793-1880), peace activist Hannah Clothier Hull (1872-1958), and suffrage leader Alice Paul (1885-1970).

The Race Street Meetinghouse served as the site of the Hicksite Yearly Meeting until 1955, when the Hicksite and Orthodox factions reconciled. Since then the Yearly Meeting has been held in the Arch Street Meetinghouse.  It is now part of the Friends Center, which includes the American Friends Service Committee, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of Friends, the Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting of Friends, and a number of non-profit organizations. The annex on the east side of the Meetinghouse, built in 1974-5, was designed by Cope and Lippincott.