Since 1699 the Great Friends Meeting House has stood in Newport, Rhode Island. This is the oldest surviving house of worship in Rhode Island and today it is open as a museum owned by the Newport Historical Society, part of the Newport Historic District. Step closer and you can read its plainness as a statement: no pulpit, statuary, steeple, or stained glass — just wide-plank floors, plain benches, a balcony and a beam ceiling beneath a shingle exterior.
The original building rose two stories tall and measured about forty-five feet square, capped by a steeply pitched hip roof with a turret where the four slopes meet. Inside, massive framing timbers, twelve inches square by forty-five feet long, brace an open worship space with a second-floor gallery on three sides. In the 17th and 18th centuries Newport’s Quaker community shaped much of the town’s culture and politics, and many Quaker houses nearby in Easton’s Point have survived.
Imagine gatherings here without ornament, a community gathered in plainness, and listen for the echo of those benches and beams beneath the gallery, the shingle exterior and turret in front of you, and Easton's Point just beyond.