Great Friends Meeting House

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Friends Meetinghouse
(U.S. National Historic Landmark)
Meetinghouse in 2008
Location:	Newport, Rhode Island
Built/Founded:	1699
Architect:	Unknown
Architectural style(s):	No Style Listed
NRHP Reference#:	[1]
Governing body:	Private

Great Friends Meeting House is a Quaker house of worship built in 1699 in Newport, Rhode Island. The meeting house is currently open as a museum owned by the Newport Historical Society. It is the oldest surviving house of worship in Rhode Island and features wide-plank floors boards, plain benches, a balcony, and a beam ceiling and a shingle exterior.

The Quaker community in Newport, Rhode Island 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" section of Newport where their houses have survived. 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 its owner Mrs. Sydney L. Wright donated the structure to the Newport Historical Society.

[edit] References and external links

• NHS meeting house website
• Mrs. William P. Buffum, "The Story of the Old Friends' Meeting House," Bulletin of the Newport Historical Society, Number 40, April, 1922

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