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Germantown Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends Meetinghouse

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1860. 47 W. Coulter St.
  • (Photograph by Matthew Aungst)
  • (Photograph by Matthew Aungst)

The continuing evolution of the regional meetinghouse can be studied in this unusual building. From the exterior it is the usual Quaker barn of local stone stuccoed over and with a surrounding porch, but the interior is closer to a Protestant church with the main axis running the length and a slightly raked floor aimed at the facing bench at the northwest end. It is perhaps an early work of Addison Hutton. Germantown became a prosperous industrial neighborhood with considerable wealth in the immediate vicinity. This is represented by a cluster of institutions that still constitutes the cultural core of the region, the most notable because it continues to thrive and grow is Germantown Friends School at Germantown Avenue and W. Coulter Street. It took its architectural tone from the adjacent meetinghouse in an expanding cluster of buildings by many of the architects who worked at nearby Haverford College ( DE36), including William L. Price (1897 two-story addition to the main school); Day and Klauder (1916 Taulane Auditorium, former Christian Science Church); Heacock and Hokanson (1924 old gym); as well as the Friends Free Library by Cope and Stewardson (1897) at 5418 Germantown Avenue.

Writing Credits

Author: 
George E. Thomas
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Data

What's Nearby

Deshler-Morris House
Germantown Academy (Germantown Union School)
St. Luke's Episcopal Church
“Grumblethorpe,” John Wister House
Vernon

Citation

George E. Thomas, "Germantown Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends Meetinghouse", [Philadelphia, Pennsylvania], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/PA-02-PH154.

Print Source

Cover: Buildings of PA vol 2

Buildings of Pennsylvania: Philadelphia and Eastern Pennsylvania, George E. Thomas, with Patricia Likos Ricci, Richard J. Webster, Lawrence M. Newman, Robert Janosov, and Bruce Thomas. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012, 139-139.

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