Carpenters' Hall

Carpenters’ Hall was completed in 1774 as the headquarters and meeting place of the Carpenters’ Company, a guild of master builders founded in 1724 and still active today as the oldest trade organization in the United States. The building was designed by Robert Smith in the Georgian style, with a distinctive octagonal cupola, and sits in a courtyard just south of Chestnut Street in what is now Independence National Historical Park.

In September 1774, before the building was fully finished, the Carpenters’ Company offered the hall as a meeting place for the First Continental Congress. Fifty-six delegates from twelve colonies — all except Georgia — convened here to coordinate a response to the Intolerable Acts, the British parliamentary legislation that had closed Boston Harbor and curtailed colonial self-governance in the aftermath of the Boston Tea Party. The Congress produced a Declaration of Rights and Grievances, called for a boycott of British goods, and agreed to reconvene if the situation did not improve — setting the institutional framework that would make the Second Continental Congress, meeting the following year, the effective government of the American colonies.

The building remains privately owned by the Carpenters’ Company and is open to the public as a museum. A collection of period woodworking tools, architectural drawings, and artifacts related to the First Continental Congress occupies the interior. Carpenters’ Hall is the only First Continental Congress meeting site that retains its original appearance and remains in the ownership of the organization that hosted the historic meeting.