Great Friends Meeting House is a
meeting house
A meeting house (meetinghouse, meeting-house) is a building where religious and sometimes public meetings take place.
Terminology
Nonconformist Protestant denominations distinguish between a
* church, which is a body of people who believe in Chr ...
of the
Religious Society of Friends
Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abili ...
(Quakers) built in 1699 in
Newport, Rhode Island
Newport is an American seaside city on Aquidneck Island in Newport County, Rhode Island. It is located in Narragansett Bay, approximately southeast of Providence, Rhode Island, Providence, south of Fall River, Massachusetts, south of Boston, ...
. The meeting house, which is part of the
Newport Historic District, is currently open as a museum owned by the
Newport Historical Society
The Newport Historical Society is a historical society in Newport, Rhode Island that was chartered in 1854 to collect and preserve books, manuscripts, and objects pertaining to Newport's history.
History of the society
Although the society ...
.
Description
The meeting house is the oldest surviving house of worship in Rhode Island. In keeping with Quaker notions of "plain style" living, the building lacks adornments like pulpits, statuary, steeples, or stained glass. It features wide-plank floors, plain benches, a balcony, a beam ceiling, and a shingle exterior.
The original building measured two stories tall and about forty-five feet square, with a steeply pitched hip roof with a turret at the junction of the four roof slopes. Inside, massive framing timbers measure twelve inches square by forty-five feet long, supporting an open worship space with a second-floor gallery on three sides.
History
The Quaker community in Newport largely controlled the culture and politics of the town in the 17th and 18th centuries, and many Quakers lived nearby in the historic "
Easton's Point
The Point (or less commonly, "Easton's Point") is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Newport, Rhode Island and has one of the highest concentrations of colonial houses in the United States. The neighborhood sits between Washington Street and F ...
" section of Newport, where their houses have survived. The meeting house was built on land owned by
Nicholas Easton
Nicholas Easton (1593–1675) was an early colonial President and Governor of Rhode Island. Born in Hampshire, England, he lived in the towns of Lymington and Romsey before immigrating to New England with his two sons in 1634. Once in the N ...
who donated his land in the 1670s. It is likely Easton's house nearby on Farewell Street was used for the first Quaker meeting house before the current meeting house was built in 1699.
Upon its completion in 1699, the meeting house was the largest structure of any kind between Boston and New York.
Significant additions were made in 1730, 1807, 1857, and 1867 to accommodate the
New England Yearly Meeting of Friends.
The turret was removed in 1806.
The meeting house was used as a house of worship until the
New England Yearly Meeting of Friends departed in 1905. The local African American community used the building as a community center until the 1970s when architect Orin M. Bullock restored the building, and in 1971 its owner Mrs. Sydney L. Wright donated the structure to the Newport Historical Society.
In 2005 a
dendrochronology
Dendrochronology (or tree-ring dating) is the scientific method of dating tree rings (also called growth rings) to the exact year they were formed. As well as dating them, this can give data for dendroclimatology, the study of climate and atmos ...
survey of the building's tree rings confirmed a 1699 construction date.
See also
*
List of the oldest buildings in Rhode Island
This article attempts to list the oldest buildings in the state of Rhode Island in the United States of America, including the oldest houses in Rhode Island and any other surviving structures. Some dates are approximate and based on architectura ...
*
Oldest churches in the United States
The designation of the oldest church in the United States requires careful use of definitions, and must be divided into two parts, the oldest in the sense of oldest surviving ''building'', and the oldest in the sense of oldest Christian churc ...
*
Portsmouth Friends Meetinghouse Parsonage and Cemetery
The Portsmouth Friends Meetinghouse, Parsonage, and Cemetery (also known as Portsmouth Friends Meeting House or Portsmouth Evangelical Friends Church) is a historic Friends Meeting House and cemetery of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), ...
References
External links
Newport Historical Society meeting house website
* ttp://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/hhh.ri0051 Listing with photographs, floor plans, and historical dataat the Historic American Buildings Survey
Heritage Documentation Programs (HDP) is a division of the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) responsible for administering the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), and Historic American Landscapes ...
Religious buildings and structures completed in 1699
Museums in Newport, Rhode Island
Religious museums in Rhode Island
History museums in Rhode Island
Historical society museums in Rhode Island
Quaker meeting houses in Rhode Island
Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in Rhode Island
Historic district contributing properties in Rhode Island
17th-century churches in the United States
National Register of Historic Places in Newport, Rhode Island
1699 establishments in Rhode Island
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