Frankford Friends Meeting House

The small brick building at the corner of Waln and Unity Streets in Frankford is the oldest Quaker meeting house still standing in Philadelphia. Quakers gathered on this spot as early as sixteen eighty-three, first in a log structure, then in a modest brick one built in seventeen oh four. The current building went up in seventeen seventy-five and seventy-six, just as the Revolution was beginning.

In eighteen eleven the congregation added a section that created two equal rooms, so men and women could each hold their own business meetings, reflecting later Quaker practice. The Philadelphia Quarterly Meeting had originally called this fellowship Tacony, then Oxford, and finally Frankford, tracking the names of the neighborhoods that grew up around it. The building has never stopped being used for worship.