The Flushing Friends Quaker Meeting House, also known as the Old Quaker Meeting House, is a historic Quaker house of worship located at 137-16 Northern Boulevard, in Flushing, Queens, New York.
It was designed by William Tubby, a prominent Brooklyn architect, to house the Brooklyn Friends School. Tubby was himself a Quaker and an early graduate of the school. The meeting house remains in regular use as a house of worship by the Brooklyn Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends.
Built in 1694 by John Bowne and other early Quakers, the Old Quaker Meeting House is, by all known accounts, the oldest house of worship in New York State and the second oldest Quaker meeting house in the nation. Visitors to the Meeting House have included George Washington, John Woolman and William Penn.
It is a plain rectangular building erected on a frame of forty-foot oak timbers, each hand hewn from a single tree. The architectural interest of the building is derived mainly from its unusually steep hipped roof; the roof is almost as high as the two stories below it. This feature can be traced to the high steep roofs of medieval Holland.
The Meeting House housed the first school in Flushing. For 300 years, Flushing Meeting members have made history struggling against religious intolerance, slavery, injustice and violence. And here Flushing Meeting continues to work, hope, and pray for a peaceful, just world.
It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1967 and a New York City designated landmark in 1970.