History

The Formation of Today’s New York Quarterly Meeting

Adapted from a Talk given by Nancy Hadley-Jaffe on January 7, 2024

NOTES ON SOURCES: While it would have been fun to research this talk in the archives for New York Yearly Meeting, once located on site, I was able to find relevant materials in the Quarterly Meeting office. The Yearly Meeting archives were relocated to Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore, some years ago.  I should say that from 1990 through January of 2007 I was Administrator of the Quarterly Meeting and spent a lot of time reading materials in various file drawers, on shelves, and, importantly, in a small tin box where the deeds are kept. When I said I would give this talk, I wasn’t exactly starting from scratch.

I would like to thank Ted Bongiovanni, Executive Director of New York Quarterly Meeting for allowing me full access to materials in the Quarterly Meeting office and basement storage area. John Maynard kindly gave permission to use his overview of the creation of the Quarterly Meeting we know in 1974. I also found useful information in the 15th Street Handbook, Faith and Practice, and Friends for 300 Years by Howard Brinton. My mistakes are my own. — Nancy

As we know it now, New York Quarterly Meeting is a religious corporation under the religious corporations law of New York State.  It is also a 501c3 tax-exempt organization under federal law.  It exists as a collection of New York City meetings which meets four times a year to conduct business brought to it by member meetings. New York Quarterly Meeting is also a member meeting of New York Yearly Meeting, which was established in 1695 and includes New York State, northern New Jersey, and southeastern Connecticut. The overlapping boundaries exist because New York Yearly Meeting’s boundaries were established before boundaries of the states. 

New York Quarterly Meeting owns properties. This is somewhat unusual, as local meetings usually own their respective properties. The Quarterly Meeting has income from a variety of sources to care for these properties and compensate the associated personnel. More information about the budget is available at the January business meeting of the NY Quarter.  The Audit and Budget Committee, a committee of the Quarterly Meeting, prepares the budget each year. The Quarterly Meeting’s fiscal (financial) year is the calendar year. Fifteenth Street Meeting’s fiscal year is  July 1 – June 30.               

Beginnings of New York City Quakers and Our Properties

Those of you familiar with the history of Friends in New York City know they were persecuted in England and many migrated to America. The first Friends in what is now New York City arrived in 1657. Governor Peter Stuyvesant didn’t make it easy for them, but they persisted. The first meeting house in Manhattan was built in 1696 on what is now Liberty Place. At that time the meetings in Manhattan were  preparative meetings of Flushing Monthly Meeting. More about preparative meetings later. The first meeting house in Brooklyn wasn’t built until 1857. The separation in 1828 led to additional meeting houses, because Orthodox and Hicksite Friends didn’t worship together.

Whether Orthodox or Hicksite, Manhattan Friends followed middle class development north and new meeting houses were built. The Orthodox Meeting House on 20th Street (now Brotherhood Synagogue) was built in 1858, the Hicksite Meeting House (what is now the 15th Street Meetinghouse), built for the Hicksite Yearly Meeting, went up in 1860 along with the first building for Friends Seminary. 

The Quarterly Meeting office holds the original deed for the 15th Street property, along with deeds for a number of other properties. Ironically (because of his history of persecuting Quakers), this property was purchased from the descendants of Peter Stuyvesant. The deed is written on a large piece of thin pale blue paper – part of it is printed and part of it is beautifully written by hand. The writing is quite legible. The deed stipulates what sort of business may be established on this land:

“No brewery, distillery, slaughterhouse, blacksmith’s shop, forge or furnace, or soap, candle, starch, varnish, vitriol, glue and/or turpentine factory or any factory for tanning, dressing or preparing skins, hides, or leather, or any cow or livery stable or cattle yard or any other dangerous, noxious, or offensive establishment whatsoever.”

Zoning came along later.

At the time the 15th Street meeting house was built, men and women were worshipping in the same room.  Older meeting houses have dividers that were once used to create separate areas for men and women.  In our (15th Street) meeting house men’s benches have closed backs; women’s benches have open backs.  They would originally have been grouped together on two sides of the room: men’s benches on one side; women’s benches on the other.  While it is tempting to attribute the open benches to bustles, they did not enter the fashion scene until the 1870’s and 1880’s. Rather, women wore full skirts, probably without the hoops that were fashionable in the middle of the century. Hoops, along with bustles, would doubtless have been considered “worldly” by Friends who came to wear what is known as plain dress.

In 1860 all proper women covered their heads in public, and sometimes at home as well.  Friends would have worn bonnets in public and lighter cloth caps at home. Quaker bonnets had special styling to provide privacy to the wearer and they were distinctive on the street.  I can attest that Quaker bonnets were not constructed for comfort. They can pinch your ears, as I learned when I tried on my great-grandmother’s Quaker bonnet nearly 75 years ago. Still, they have their uses – even in modern times.  In 2001 Linnaea Tillett, who designed the lighting system in the 15th Street meeting room, asked about Quaker design.  People still confuse the Shaker and the Quakers.  I had to explain that we were Quakers and the Shakers were the folks who made the wonderful furniture.  The one example of distinctly Quaker design I could offer was a Quaker bonnet and I pulled out our collection of them to display.  The brims make a distinctive curve which Linnaea loved.  Unfortunately, curved fixtures emulating Quaker bonnets proved far beyond our budget so we ended up with straight ones. The hanging pendants are custom.

In 1860 the cost to build the Rutherford Place complex (Meeting House plus Seminary) was $300,000, the equivalent of approximately 11 million dollars today.  

The design of the 15th Street meeting house is attributed to Charles Bunting, a member of the meeting.  He is also supposed to have designed and built the Hicksite meeting house in Brooklyn (110 Schermerhorn Street). The story goes that 15th Street Friends saw the Brooklyn Meeting House, liked it, and Charles Bunting got the job on Rutherford Place. These days we talk about architects and contractors; in the mid 19th century there were just builders.  

Orthodox Friends in Manhattan built a handsome meeting house on the south side of Gramercy Park, 20th Street. It was saved from the developer’s wrecking ball by the Landmarks Law. The Quarterly Meeting office holds a copy of the letter to Harry Helmsley. His firm took charge of the sale. The letter is accompanied by a copy of a photograph of the then 20th Street Meeting House which bears the words “Meeting House for Sale.”  The letter also lists various individuals interested in the sale of the building to a Jewish group.  Among the names we find Richard Tucker, a renowned tenor who sang at the Metropolitan Opera.  Brotherhood  Synagogue, once the 20th Street Meeting House, is thriving today and welcomes visitors.

Orthodox Friends built a meeting house at 265 Lafayette Avenue in Brooklyn. The building still stands. It was sold in the 1960’s as part of the effort of Friends to consolidate their New York City properties and monies. 

NYC Friends Schools

While the school now known as Friends Seminary was established in 1784 on Pearl Street in Manhattan, Brooklyn Friends School was established sometime later in 1867. That building, 112-116 Schermerhorn Street, still stands right next to the Brooklyn Meeting House at 110 Schermerhorn Street.  In 1972 I taught in that school building.  At the time the school’s library was in the upstairs rooms of the meeting house and school lunches were cooked in the Meeting House kitchen. At lunch time the social room became the cafeteria. The original building for Brooklyn Friends School was attached to the Brooklyn Meeting House. Doors connecting the buildings may still be seen on the school side; they are completely covered over on the meeting house side.

In 1973 Brooklyn Friends School moved to an Art Deco building at 375 Pearl Street formerly occupied by the Brooklyn Law School.  The “new” building had been renovated and it was delightful to have a modern, spacious classroom instead of the cramped basement room with a badly warped floor that had been my former art room.  Still, I found I missed the winter warmth of that old, battered classroom right next to the furnace room with its coal burning furnace.  Coal was burned in that furnace all the years I worked at the Quarterly Meeting.  The Department of Education upgraded somewhere along the way and the coal-burning furnace is now gone. 

Later on, as Brooklyn Friends School needed additional space, there was an opportunity to rent its old building on Schermerhorn Street.  The school lost out to the Department of Education.

After some difficult years at the beginning, Friends Seminary flourished and expanded.  In the 1960’s there was a general overhaul of both 15th Street Meeting and Seminary buildings.  Funds from the sale  of the 20th Street Meeting House were among the monies used to build Hunter Hall (the yellow brick building on 16th Street) in 1964. Several townhouses were demolished in order to do so; their boundaries are discreetly marked on the façade of Hunter Hall.  In 1973 the Seminary acquired Kelley House, the townhouse directly adjacent to Hunter Hall. Kelley House was the former home of Nicholas Kelly, one of the treasurers of New York Monthly Meeting.  In 1997 the former Masonic Temple on 15th Street was purchased; it is now known as the Annex. Two additional townhouses, 214 East 16th Street and 212 East Sixteenth Street were acquired in 2000 and 2006 respectively.

Mary McDowell Center for Learning, the Quarter’s school for learning disabled children, started in the basement of the Brooklyn Meeting House.  The whole meeting house was renovated around 1975.  The basement was dug out to create more space, and classroom divisions were built of glass block to maximize light.  Mary McDowell was a success and has expanded to three buildings in Brooklyn.  

Friends Cemetery & Burial Sites

The Quarter has meeting houses and, for part of its history, schools, and, of course, a cemetery.

Our Cemetery now in Prospect Park was established outside park boundaries in 1849.  There was (is) an Orthodox hill and a Hicksite hill separated by a road. The distinctions between Orthodox and Hicksite matter little today. Prior to acquiring the land in Prospect Park, Friends had other cemeteries. One of them was the Houston Street Burial Ground ca. 1796-1874. The area was duly noted by the Landmarks Commission and the Landmarks Law was triggered in the early 2000’s when developers wanted to build on land identified as being at the edge of the former cemetery. A representative from the developers came to the Quarterly Meeting office to request permission to exhume and examine remains that might still be there.  It should be noted they had access to burial records preserved in the New York Public Library. Permission to study any remains that might be retrieved was requested from and granted by the Cemetery Committee in exchange for a report on what was found. For a short while we thought an individual might be identified, but that was not possible. We learned the bits of bone and teeth that were exhumed gave evidence of general good health as well as careful exhumation when remains were removed—meaning they didn’t find any whole bones. All remains from the recent excavation were reinterred in Friends Cemetery, Prospect Park, in 2003. Remains removed during the nineteenth century were divided up among several Friends’ cemeteries, Friends Cemetery, Prospect Park being one of them.

The Mott Plot, the section of the Cemetery just to the left of the entrance, contains Motts (as in applesauce Motts) as well as others, including my mother.  In the 19th century and earlier people who had land sometimes also had private cemeteries on their land. Originally the Motts in question were interred in their private cemetery on their family land in Maspeth. At some point the family wanted to move away and asked New York Monthly Meeting to look after the plot. Over time the area around Maspeth became derelict and Friends petitioned the court to move those remains to the Cemetery in Prospect Park where they rest to this day.  Mott money came along with the Mott remains and is, today, part of the Quarterly Meeting’s endowment. 

Trusts and Endowments

Old religious institutions frequently have money attached to them. This money is often in the form of an endowment.  An endowment is a collection of gifts (bequests) of money (or property) which, in the case of the Quarterly Meeting, has accumulated over time.  In the case of the current Quarterly Meeting, some of these gifts have been made without restrictions and are used for general purposes and some gifts have been made with restrictions and are used for specific purposes. The endowment now held by the Quarterly Meeting has been accumulating for over a century.  The Educational Fund, for example, was established around 1820 and came into the Quarterly Meeting’s endowment from the 20th Street Meeting.

Around the turn of the twentieth century the name “Combined Trusts” appeared in the records, and the name stuck.  That name was the source of great confusion over the past century and some because it was thought that the Meeting had a collection of actual trusts.  Research in recent years tells us that the bulk of the money in what is now known as the “Pooled Fund” is not in the form of trusts at all. I want to say something about the organization of the Quarterly Meeting’s endowment. Before John Wilson, treasurer of the Monthly Meeting for many years, pulled the money together into a unified system during the 1960’s, there were a lot of savings accounts.  His handwritten ledger, preserved in the Quarterly Meeting office, takes the various “trust” accounts back to 1948 and brings them forward.  We don’t know why he chose 1948 as a starting point. The handwritten ledger continues to the early 1990’s when the whole system was computerized.  In the office there is a drawer full of folders, each one representing a bequest. 

Sometime in the mid-1990’s I was asked to research the contents of those folders.  At that time there were 130-some separate lines in the records, each one representing a different pot of money.  Market value of each fund was determined every year, along with the percentage of income generated by that fund.  During my time in the office, for example, approximately sixteen percent of the principal in the Combined Trusts fund was assigned to the Cemetery; sixteen percent of the income was assigned to the Cemetery, and so on. The income distribution system has been somewhat modernized over time, but always with reference to the donors’ original intent.

I likened the Combined Trusts (Pooled Fund) to the chain worn by Marley’s Ghost in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.  The system for annual distribution of income to a small list of beneficiaries was clunky at best - overly elaborate and very time-consuming — a crazy quilt of decisions made decades ago turned into a list of about a dozen checks.  In 2001 for example, I wrote checks to the following and more: Oakwood School, Friends Seminary, Brooklyn Friends School, the Relief Committee, Young Friends Aid, American Friends Service Committee, Brooklyn Monthly Meeting, Council of Churches of the City of New York, Brooklyn Council of Churches, Friends United Meeting.  These checks were signed by two Trustees.    I understand efforts are underway to simplify past ways of allocating endowment income.  Maybe Marley’s ghost’s chain will become a thing of the past.

Let me say a little about how a bequest turns into a distribution.  Fifteenth Street Friends will recall that the meeting recently received the Scott bequest (gift).  The relevant portion of the will was read to offer guidance as to the donor’s wishes regarding use of the money.  The check was deposited into one of the Meeting’s investment accounts at Friends Fiduciary to await our decisions about distributing the income.  A committee was formed to decide how to spend the money, and sometime in this coming year Friends may hear about how the money was spent.

Over many years, Friends and others gave bequests to their individual meetings, or gave funds for something like the upkeep of the Cemetery. During the period of consolidation in the 1960’s, buildings were sold and funds formerly kept by individual meetings were pulled together into a single account — formerly known as the Combined Trusts. Eventually Friends decided to invest the money in the stock market, but not before some expressed discomfort to be engaging in speculation. The broker of choice was a member of 15th Street Meeting. Until Friends caught up with what was going on, he was earning money for the Meeting “hand over fist” by investing in companies like Boeing. Friends decided Boeing’s purposes didn’t accord with our principles and set forth a series of investment guidelines followed to this day.  A subcommittee of the Trustees, the Investment Sub-Committee, handled the investing in-house for some years.  They did very well. One of the field auditors told me that he handled larger portfolios than the Quarter’s but he always checked our investments for his own portfolio because he thought our investment sub-committee’s choices were good.  In fact in 2006 when the bulk of the portfolio was liquidated in order to transfer monies to Friends Fiduciary, there was a capital gain of around seven million dollars on a portfolio smaller than today’s. My assistant and I had a good time adding everything up and felt thankful the Quarter was tax-exempt.  

Simply from having property in New York City for a very long time, Friends ended up with a couple of exercises of eminent domain.  Eminent domain is defined in a Bing search as “the right of a government or its agent to expropriate private property for public use with payment of compensation.”  The files tell us of two such instances.  The first was when the City wanted to expand Prospect Park and the Cemetery was in the way.  The City ended up taking a good chunk of the cemetery land, leaving what we have now.  Records show that a sum was promised to Friends – and agreed to by Friends. Then, when the time came to turn over money, the City wanted to spend less.  Friends protested and received what had originally been promised.  In 1957 the City wanted to widen Boerum Place in Brooklyn from State Street to Fulton Street.  Part of the playground next to the Brooklyn Meeting House was taken in exchange for $34,000 (worth $383,180 in today’s money).  The relevant folder in the Quarterly Meeting office says, simply, “Condemnation Fund.”

Bequests weren’t always money.  One Friend, for example, gave land in Quogue.  The meeting sold the land and, at the wish of the donor, those funds went toward scholarships for the schools.  In the mid-19th century Josiah Macy sent $10,000 at the request of his mother.  This money is the basis of the Quarterly Meeting’s Relief Committee’s endowment. Josiah Macy was not the founder of Macy’s department store. However, R.L. Macy, who was the founder, was a Quaker. Most unusual for his time, he charged the same price for an item to anyone. The usual practice was to change the price from customer to customer, depending on social status, etc. He was also the first department store executive to promote a woman to an executive position. Bequests didn’t always come from meeting members, either.  One very large bequest came from the estate of Sylvia Wilks, daughter of Hetty Green, the Quaker financier on Wall Street during the latter part of the 19th century. At her death, Sylvia Wilks was not a member of a meeting.  A bit of scuttlebutt says that that money became available around the time the 15th and 20th Street meetings were getting together and there was apparently some foot-dragging on the part of 15th Street.  When it seemed the money might land at 20thStreet, 15th Street got its act together, the meetings joined up and the Wilks money is now ours to spend.

Property and Incorporation

Meeting property ownership had to undergo a significant change before today’s Quarterly Meeting could be formed. Turning back to 1860 and the deed to the land on Rutherford Place, we see that the land is to be held “in trust” for New York Monthly Meeting. While the Constitution protects religious liberty, it was up to the states to create applicable laws governing ownership of religious property. In 1860 under New York State religious law, New York Monthly Meeting was considered an unincorporated association and unable to own property. Instead the properties were held in trust by Trustees of the Monthly Meeting.  This situation stayed as it was until the Monthly Meeting was incorporated in 1960.

Much had to happen before members of New York Monthly Meeting decided to incorporate. In New York the schism of 1828 was finally healed when the Orthodox and Hicksite yearly meetings merged in 1955. In the files we see a report of a Committee to Discuss Uniting the Monthly Meetings dated 1957 so actually coming together on the monthly meeting level took a while longer.

Preparative Meetings   

 New York Yearly Meeting’s Faith and Practice says the following about the organization of meetings.  

“A monthly meeting sometimes comprises two or more congregations holding separate meetings for worship and organized as preparative meetings. These [meetings] have limited authority to conduct business mainly related to local property and finances, and to the preparation of business for submission to the monthly meeting.

Two or more monthly meetings in the same area usually form a quarterly meeting in order to worship and counsel together and conduct business of common interest and concern.”

Matters such as marriages and membership were referred by preparative meetings to the monthly meeting. When the two branches, Hicksite and Orthodox, came together to form New York Monthly Meeting in the 1950’s, meetings now known as monthly meetings were preparative meetings.  So 15th Street Meeting, for example, was a preparative meeting for New York Monthly Meeting, which was, in its turn, a member meeting of the New York Westbury Quarterly Meeting.  

Hang on because we haven’t gotten to today’s New York Quarterly Meeting yet.  After the Hicksite and Orthodox meetings came together to form New York Monthly Meeting, the latter incorporated. You may remember earlier in this talk I spoke about how property was held in trust for the meetings.  Frank Ortloff, the first Administrator of New York Quarterly Meeting, formerly a 20th Street Friend, was an attorney.  When he learned the properties were being held in trust, he was probably horrified.  Without incorporation, the trustees could be individually liable in case of a lawsuit. When I was growing up my Dad told me “Quakers don’t sue.”  But what about everybody else?  As late as the 1950’s Friends’ meetings  in New York State were still considered unincorporated associations under New York State religious law. Frank Ortloff was instrumental in securing an “act to amend the religious corporations law in relation to incorporation of the Religious Society of Friends” which was approved by the Senate on February 3, 1959. It reads as follows:

“Section 1.  The religious law corporations law is hereby amended by inserting therein a new section, to be section two hundred one-a, to read as follows:

201-a.  To amend the religious corporations law.  An unincorporation [sic] meeting of the Religious Society of Friends in this state may be incorporated by executing, acknowledging and filing a certificate of incorporation, stating the corporate name by which such meeting shall be known, and the county, city or village where its principal place of worship or principal office is or is intended to be located.  Such certificate of incorporation shall be executed and acknowledged by the clerk of such meeting, and shall have attached thereto a statement, duly executed and acknowledged by the secretary, assistant clerk, or such person as shall have the duty of recording the transactions of business sessions of meetings of such meeting, certifying that at a business session or meeting of such meeting, duly held and upon not less than thirty days notice, to the members thereof, as hereinafter provided, by a minute of the proceedings thereat, duly approved according to the usage and custom of such meeting, the clerk of such meeting was authorized and directed to execute and file such certificate of incorporation.  Such notice shall be in writing, shall be given by mail addressed to the last known address of each member of such meeting according to the records thereof, and shall state in substance that a meeting of such unincorporated meeting will be held at its usual place of convening at a specific date and hour for the purpose of incorporating such meeting.  

On the filing of such a certificate with the provisions of this chapter, each meeting shall be a corporation by the name listed in the certificate.

This act shall take effect immediately.”

A copy of this document, dated February 3, 1959 is attached to a copy of the incorporation papers for New York Monthly Meeting dated January 21, 1960. Both of these documents are in the office files.

This act leads me to say something about Friends and governance before New York State was involved.  Early Friends were a very scattered lot and those who became leaders among early Friends frequently found themselves in jail.  That left everybody else interested in George Fox’s message to fend for themselves. Some sort of organization was needed.  Howard Brinton, in Friends For Three Hundred Years, thought the core of Friends’ church government came from a letter issued as “guidance for conduct.”  This letter, issued by The General Meeting at Skipton for Friends in the North in 1659, tells us the following: 

“That the power of the God-head may be know in the body, in that perfect freedom which every member hath in Christ Jesus, that none may exercise lordship or dominion over another, nor the person of any be set apart, but as they continue in the power of truth----that truth itself in the body may reign, not persons or forms: and that all may be honored as stand in the life of the truth wherein is the power not over but in the body.”

Brinton writes:  “In other words, the meeting is to act as a whole and be governed by Truth, not by persons appointed to rule.”  No wonder that a special amendment was needed to allow Friends to incorporate.  Other churches had an individual perceived to be in charge.

Returning to modern times, New York Monthly Meeting was duly incorporated.  The next step was to separate from the New York Westbury Quarter and permission to do so was obtained from New York Yearly Meeting.  In 1974 we see the first minute book of New York Quarterly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, structurally just a name change from New York Monthly Meeting.  Of course this change of name was filed with the state.

The  New York Monthly Meeting corporation included two schools, Friends Seminary in Manhattan and Brooklyn Friends School in Brooklyn. The Quarterly Meeting corporation also included the two schools until they were separated.

By 2005 the Trustees of New York Quarterly Meeting were considering separating the schools from the rest of the Quarterly Meeting corporation. That took some time, but by 2008 Brooklyn Friends had separated from the rest of the Quarterly Meeting. Separating Friends Seminary took longer because of intertwined properties and finances. Friends Seminary received its charter from New York State on 2015. Mary McDowell Center for Learning was not part of the New York Quarterly Meeting corporation.  

At this time, in 2024, member meetings of New York Quarterly Meeting are: Fifteenth Street Meeting, Manhattan Monthly Meeting, Brooklyn Monthly Meeting, Morningside Monthly Meeting, Flushing Monthly Meeting and Staten Island Executive Meeting. There is also a seasonal Downtown Manhattan Allowed Meeting. The meetings regularly report to the Quarterly Meeting along with all three schools.   

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Sources:

Faith and Practice of New York Yearly Meeting

Friends for 300 Years by Howard Brinton.

Handbook: Fifteenth Street Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends   1923 edition

Outline of Some Aspects of the New York Quarterly Meeting’s Creation in 1974: John Maynard

Deed to Rutherford Place Properties, 1860:  New York Quarterly Meeting papers

Letter to Harry Helmsley from Theodore H. Friend dated December 30, 1963:  New York Quarterly Meeting papers

Report of Committee to Discuss Uniting the Monthly Meetings (1957):  New York Quarterly Meeting papers
Act of the Senate of the State of New York  No. 2164 February 2, 1959:  New York Quarterly Meeting Papers

Certificate of Incorporation of New York Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, January 21, 1960: New York Quarterly Meeting papers

Throughout: references to Combined Trusts (Pooled Fund) documents held by New York Quarterly Meeting