Old Haverford Friends' Meeting

Lower Merion Township, PA · est. 1967

Raised in 1695 by Welsh Quakers who had followed William Penn's promise of religious liberty to his new colony, this meeting house is among the oldest houses of worship in Pennsylvania. Tradition holds that Penn himself worshipped within its walls, and the unusual cross-shaped plan is credited to the Welsh carpenters who built it. It has gathered Friends for silent worship continuously for more than three centuries.

Marple Township, PA · est. 1986

The oldest part of this house, a brick section, rose before 1708 on the 300-acre plantation Thomas Massey had acquired by 1696 in the young colony of Pennsylvania. Successive generations added to it in stone, and its rooms record the slow evolution of a rural homestead from William Penn's day into the nineteenth century. Deeded to Marple Township in 1964 and restored, it survives as a rare example of early Pennsylvania architecture.

Upper Darby, PA · est. 1989

This modest log structure is the last survivor of several cabins that once lined Darby Creek, built by Swedish colonists who settled the lower Delaware Valley after New Sweden was founded in 1638. Its notched-log construction is a direct link to that short-lived Scandinavian colony, whose building style influenced American frontier architecture. Centuries later the cabin found a second life as a film set, used by Philadelphia motion-picture pioneer Siegmund Lubin for several movies before 1910.

Philadelphia, PA · est. 1998

Isaac Leeser served as minister of Philadelphia's historic Congregation Mikveh Israel and became one of the most influential Jewish leaders in antebellum America. He founded The Occident, an early Jewish periodical, and in 1853 produced an English translation of the Hebrew Bible for American Jews. As a teacher and scholar he helped shape Jewish religious and communal life across the young republic.