FRIENDS' BANK MEETING

ON FRONT STREET.

[ILLUSTRATED BY A PLATE.]

THE Friends' Meeting, in Front above Mulberry street, built in 1685, was originally intended as an "Evening Meeting," while the one at the Centre Square [south west corner,] was then erected as a Day Meeting. Part of the surplus materials used at the latter were removed to aid in building the Evening Meeting. It was called, in that day, "the Evening Meeting." In after-years, when they constructed, in 1753, "the Hill Meeting," on Pine street, they called this house, in relation to its position, the "North Meeting." After they cut down the Front street before the house, so as to leave the Meeting on a high table land, they then called it "the Bank Meeting." It was sold and taken down in 1789, at the time it became useless by their building "the new meeting-house" in Keys' alley, which soon after took the name of "the Up-town' Meeting."

The Bank Meeting as aforesaid had its front on the Front street. The pediment at the front door was supported by columns—at that door the men entered. On the southern side was a double door covered by a shed, by one of which the women entered. At those doors was the entrance for men and women to the gallery-the men going to the east, and the women to the west. Originally the Meeting had no board partition, but a curtain was used when they held the preparative meeting. The preacher's gallery was on the northern side. The house was fifty feet front by thirty-eight feet wide, and the green yard in front, within the brick enclosure or wall, was 14 feet wide. Originally the street and house were on the same level. The present James C. Fisher, Esq. has preserved the oak column which supported the gallery, and which had been brought from the Centre Square Meeting.

Such minute detail may seem too circumstantial to some who never gave the place, when standing, their regard or inspection; but those who were accustomed to assemble there in their youth, conducted and controlled by parents now no more, will be thank

ful for every revived impression, and every means of recreating the former images of things by-gone.

"Ilk place we scan seems still to speak

Of some dear former day

We think where ilka ane had sat,

Or fixt our hearts to pray,

"Till soft remembrance drew a veil
Across these een o' mine!"

Thus "when we remembered Zion, then we sat down and wept." Richard Townsend, the primitive settler and a public Friend, says the Friends set up, in 1682, a boarded meeting-house near to the Delaware. We presume it was on this premises; it meant a temporary building.

Robert Turner, in writing to William Penn, in 1685, says, besides the brick meeting-house at the Centre, we have a large meeting-house, 50 by 38, going on, the front of the river for an Evening Meeting.

The meeting-house elevated as it was, as much as ten or twelve feet above the street from which you beheld it, gave it a peculiar and striking appearance, and the abundance of green sod, seen from the street when the two gates were opened, contrasted with the whitish stone steps of ascent, gave the whole a very attractive aspect.

Its original advantages for prospect and river scenery must have been delightful; it had no obstruction between it and the river, so that all who assembled there could look over to the Jerseys and up and down the river, from a commanding eminence. The houses answering to Nos. 83 and 85, opposite to it, were built with flat roofs, calked and pitched, and did not rise higher above Front street than to serve as a breast-high wall.

The meeting-house when taken down was superseded by a uniform row of three story houses now flushing with the line of Front street. It may be still seen near there that the old houses have marks of having once had their present first stories under ground, and their street doors formerly in what is now their second story.

FRIENDS' MEETING

AT CENTRE SQUARE, &c.

THIS building was originally constructed in the year 1685, at the south west corner of the Centre Square, then in a natural forest of oaks and hickories. It might surprise some, now, to account for a choice so far from the inhabitants dwelling on the Delaware side of the city. The truth was, that expectations were originally entertained that the city would expand from the centre towards both rivers; but it was soon found that the commerce of the Delaware engrossed all, and Centre Square Meeting came, in time, to be deserted, and the house itself in time disappeared.

Penn's letter, of 1683, to the Free Society of Traders, sufficiently intimates the cause of its location there, showing that Penn expected business to concentre there-he saying. "Delaware is a glorious river; but the Schuylkill being 100 miles boatable above the Falls, and its course north west, towards the fountain of Susquehanna, (that tends to the heart of the province, and both sides our own,) it is like to be a great part of the settlement of this age."In concurrence with these ideas, Oldmixon's book says "the Centre Square, as he heard it from Penn, was for a state-house, market-house, and chief meeting-house for the Quakers."

Robert Turner's letter, of 1685, to William Penn, says: "We are now laying the foundation of a large plain brick building for a meeting-house in the Centre, 60 feet long by 40 feet broad, and hope to have it soon up, there being many hearts and hands at work that will do it." The present aged D. Merrot and B. Kite, Friends, have told me they remembered to have seen brick remains on the foundation, in the days of their youth, on the south west corner of the Square. Whether they meant the present Centre I am not able to say; for, it is to be observed, there was at some period a re-appointment, by which the Broad street is now placed more westward than was originally appointed. At first it was placed, on paper, 528 feet west from Eleventh street; but now Twelfth and Thirteenth streets intervene, making 1024 feet now westward of Eleventh street.

The general state of woods in which the meeting-house was originally located continued much the same till the time of the Revo