Friends have been continuously meeting for worship in
Shrewsbury since 1665 when a group of Friends came from
Rhode Island and Long Island to establish a settlement at
Shrewsbury. Shrewsbury Meeting was New Jersey's first
Friends Meeting and is New Jersey's oldest rural
religious congregation. The early meetings for worship
took place in the homes of members. The first
meetinghouse was built in 1672 and was visited that same
year by George Fox, the founder of Quakerism. It was a
single room wood structure located about a mile east of
the current meetinghouse in what is now Little Silver.
There have been two meetinghouses on the current
property, which Friends purchased from John Lippincott in
1689. The current meetinghouse was constructed in 1816.
It is of wood timber frame construction. The walls are
filled with brick, mostly likely salvaged from its burned
out predecessor. The meetinghouse is of the two-cell
form, affording women and men equal space for their
meetings for business. The movable panels of the wall
separating the two sections were closed for meetings for
business and left open for worship and other functions.
This was the classic Quaker meetinghouse design
established in 1768 at Buckingham Meetinghouse, Bucks
County, Pennsylvania.
In 1940, the Historic American Building Survey (HABS) did
a comprehensive engineering and architectural study of
Shrewsbury Meetinghouse and it was placed on the National
Register of Historic Places. The Library of Congress has scanned
images of the study in their "Built in America"
collection under the title "Friends Meetinghouse,
Sycamore Avenue, Shrewsbury, Monmouth County, NJ".
We have scaled down copies of a few of the images in
pictures.
Shrewsbury Meetinghouse remains essentially original
except for the roof and the interior of the east room
that was severely damaged by a 1968 fire. The room was
remodeled to provide a fellowship hall, kitchen and
restrooms.