Carpenters’ Hall

Carpenters’ Hall
320 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
215-925-0167
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The chain of events leading to the convening of the First Continental Congress can be traced back to an event that occurred in December, 1773 in Boston. Parliament had granted the British East India Company exclusive rights to sell tea in the colonies through its agents. Merchants whose loyalty to the King was suspect would be out of business. A hundred and fifty colonists, thinly disguised as Mohawk Indians, retaliated by dumping chests of East India Company tea into Boston Harbor.

King George’s reaction to the Boston Tea Party was unflinching. “The die is now cast … the colonies must either submit or triumph.” Parliament rose to the challenge with a series of bills called the Coercive Acts, referred to by Americans as the Intolerable Acts. Many colonists viewed the acts as an arbitrary violation of their rights as English subjects. Need for coordinated response was perceived, and in early September, 1774, delegates from twelve of the thirteen colonies arrived in Philadelphia to work out a mutually agreeable course of action.

Joseph Galloway, the loyalist speaker of the Provincial Assembly of Pennsylvania, offered the Pennsylvania State House (now Independence Hall) as a meeting place. The delegates chose to convene the First Continental Congress in the more politically neutral Carpenters’ Hall, a two-story brick building belonging to the Carpenters’ Company of the City and County of Philadelphia.

The eighteenth century Master Builder, proficient in both construction and design, often began his career as a house carpenter. The Master Builder was responsible for the success of the entire project, and would act as chief architect, contractor and engineer. The Carpenters’ Company was a trade association, founded in 1724 to set architectural standards, to aid members and their families in times of need, and to set prices.

A visitor to Philadelphia in the 1700s would have seen many buildings designed and constructed by members of the Carpenters’ Company, including the Pennsylvania State House, Old City Hall, The Pennsylvania Hospital, Benjamin Franklin’s mansion, and Carpenters’ Hall itself. The Georgian style Carpenters’ Hall was built between 1770 and 1773, and was first used as a meeting site by the guild on January 21, 1771. Benjamin Franklin’s Library Company of Philadelphia signed a lease for the entire second floor in 1772, and the Carpenters’ Company continued to hold annual meetings on the first floor until 1777, when the British captured Philadelphia.

The First Continental Congress produced a union of the colonies, leadership for the American Revolution, and a nascent governmental structure which continued to grow and evolve. The Carpenters’ Company has maintained continuous ownership of the building to this day, and Carpenters’ Hall is managed in association with the National Park Service’s Independence National Historical Park.

Carpenters’ Hall was designed by Robert Smith, a Scottish-born architect who emigrated to America in the 1740s. In addition to membership in the Carpenters’ Company, Smith belonged to the prestigious American Philosophical Society and was considered by many to be the foremost master builder of the Colonial Period.

The weight of the building is principally borne by the exterior brick walls, which are 13 inches thick. Bricks were laid in a pattern called Flemish Bond, meaning that each header (short brick) lies in the middle of the stretcher (long brick) in the row below it. Here, the headers were created from brick ends taken from the side placed closest to the fire in the kiln.

Delegates met in the east portion of the first floor, shown here. How these Windsor chairs (the backrest and undercarriage are fixed into a wooden seat) survived the British occupation of Philadelphia is a bit of a mystery, but most likely members took them home for safekeeping. After the British abandoned the city, the chairs were branded by the Carpenters’ Company. That’s how we know that the ones on display today are from that era, and were most likely used while the First Continental Congress sat. That was unintentional.

This furniture has been used by the Carpenters’ Company since the late 1800s for their quarterly meetings. The meetings are presided over by its elected officers, the President and Secretary of the Company and the Secretary of the Managing Committee.