Carpenters' Hall 4.16

Carpenters' Hall is a two-story brick building in the Old City neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, that was a key meeting place in the early history of the United States. Completed in 1775 and set back from Chestnut Street, the meeting hall was built for and is still owned by the Carpenters' Company of the City and County of Philadelphia, the country's oldest extant craft guild. The First Continental Congress met here. The building was designated a National Historic Landmark on 15 April 1970 and is part of Independence National Historical Park.HistoryCarpenters' Hall was designed by architect Robert Smith in the Georgian style based on both the town halls of Scotland, where Smith was born, and the villas of the Palladio in Italy. It would be first used as a meeting site by the guild on January 21, 1771, and would continue to hold annual meetings there until 1777 when the British captured Philadelphia. On April 23, 1773 (St. George's Day), it was used for the founding meeting of the Society of Englishmen and Sons of Englishmen.