Friends Neighborhood Guild

Quaker-sponsored community center; established in 1880 as Friends' mission No. 1; name changed in 1899.

The Friends Neighborhood Guild is a settlement house serving the Poplar section of North Philadelphia. The organization was founded in 1879 and was originally called the Friends Beach Street Mission. In 1899, the organization was renamed the Friends Neighborhood Guild.

The Guild was involved in the redevelopment of East Poplar. In 1950, the Guild started the Friends Self Help Cooperative, one of the most successful housing cooperatives in Philadelphia. The cooperative subsequently purchased Penn Towne, a Redevelopment Authority housing project at Seventh and Fairmount Streets. The Guild also established Operation Poplar, an extensive outreach program that involved the Guild in housing, community organizing, juvenile counseling, urban renewal, small businesses, and other facets of neighborhood life.

The Friends Neighborhood Guild social settlement was founded by Quakers in the Northern Liberties section of Philadelphia in 1879; its mission, “...to serve and respond to the needs of the people in its community, particularly those people who are less able to help themselves,” (FNG, p.3). Throughout its more-than-hundred-year history, this mission has guided the Guild’s programs, which have evolved to meet its ever-changing constituents’ needs. At different times, its work has focused on education, Americanization, recreation, housing, community organization and other areas of social need.

The Friends Neighborhood Guild was established in 1879 as the Friends Mission No. 1. It was started by a group of Hicksite Quakers who were concerned over the large numbers of impoverished European immigrants crowding into the neighborhood at the time and, according to the Quakers, living with “no refining influences,” (FNG, p.9). The Mission initially organized as a school that taught “bible and deportment” as well as sewing. When the Mission officially opened its doors in January, 1880, there were fifty-three scholars.

In 1899, its expanding program necessitated a move to larger facilities at 151 Fairmount Avenue, as well as a name change to Friends Neighborhood Guild. By 1901, the Guild’s programs included: kindergarten; manual training; savings fund (bank); Evening Department, which kept children off the streets, offering readings and recreation to eight to sixteen year-olds; sewing school; and First Day School. The Guild sponsored “Reward of Merit Trips” to the Zoological Gardens, Atlantic City and other fun destinations, which rewarded children and adults for their good behavior. There was also a yearly scholarship awarded to a student attending the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Philanthropy, who used the Guild as their practice field. The Guild eventually established a “Fuel Savings Society,” a “Flower, Fruit and Ice Mission,” a dental clinic and a general health program. The health program proved especially important in 1919 during the influenza epidemic. Until 1903, when the Guild hired its first full-time superintendent, Emily Wilbur, all of the above-mentioned programs were staffed by volunteers. The Guild responded to the Great Depression of the 1930s in a couple of ways. Among other things, it opened earlier and closed later, offering opportunity for recreation or simply a place for people to go. Together with the American Friends’ Service Committee, the Guild established the Philadelphia Work Camp in 1934, which among other projects renovated one of the Guild’s buildings and refurbished a neighborhood playground. During World War II, the Guild shifted its focus from a “Boys’ House” to a family center. The arts and the elderly were also given considerably more attention. In fact, the Guild partnered with the Philadelphia Center for Older People, and refurbished a house for that agency at 921 N. Sixth Street.

After World War II, the Guild’s program focus shifted towards vocational guidance; counseling; student aid, in particular the provision of scholarships for leadership; crime prevention, especially the establishment of Franklin House, a halfway house for youths recently discharged from correction with no place else to go; and health programs, including a well baby clinic, dental clinic, free chest x-ray program, sex education and venereal disease prevention/awareness programs.

In the 1950s, an overall concern for the deteriorating inner city and poor housing became central to the Guild’s mission. In 1952, the Bedford Street Mission, which taught self-help home and furniture refurbishing, affiliated with the Guild and moved into the basement of a Guild-owned building at 735 Fairmount Avenue. Around the same time, the Guild helped organize a large scale urban renewal effort in the Poplar section of the neighborhood, which was selected by the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority. On a private level, the Guild partnered with the American Friends Service Committee and established a housing co-operative. They acquired a row of dilapidated houses to convert into apartment units, and hired architect Oscar Stonorov (already well known for his design for the public housing units called the Carl Mackley Houses) to design the project. The laborers used to actually complete the construction were the future tenants of the apartments. Shortly after the completion of the cooperative apartments, the Guild embarked on the construction of Guild House, an apartment building for the elderly. This building, which was built on Spring Garden Street and completed in 1966, was a modern apartment house with ninety-one units, an elevator, community room and other useful amenities.

In the 1960s, the Guild, which was still entirely governed by Quakers, was faced with backlash from the community who wished for a greater say in the administration and programming of the settlement. Members of the Black Panthers held sit-ins at Board Meetings and held a conference at the Guild headquarters. As a result, eventually, the Guild created a parallel Community Board, which worked in conjunction with the existing board. This proved a poor solution to the problem, forcing the organization to change its by-laws in order to establish a new board comprised equally of both Quakers and community members.

All of the activity spurred by the Black Power movement instigated a change in the focus of the Guild’s programs towards community organization, and it began to take leadership roles in organizing the community to solve the problems facing the neighborhood. For example, when the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Reading Railroad wanted to construct a tunnel connecting the commuter lines that ran right through the neighborhood, the Guild instituted the “Stop the Tunnel Committee.”

By the 1970s, the Guild’s programs and/or affiliations had expanded to include: Association for the Improvement of the Richard Allen Homes, Crime Prevention and Protection Service, Consumer Protection Program, Welfare Rights Organization, Stoddart-Fleisher Academic Alternative Program, Health Center, Neighborhood Youth Corps, summer camps, welfare reform and others. The National Federation of Settlements selected the Guild to act as one of five pilot programs of the Preparing Teenagers for Parenthood, which was designed to help young people make good decisions about sex and was a successful program. In 1979, The Guild opened Guild House West, which was another housing facility built for the elderly.

In the 1980s, the Guild was selected by the Greater Philadelphia Federation of Settlements to run the following programs: Services to Children In Their Own Homes and Day Treatment Program for Adjudicated Youth. In addition, it continued to run camp for music, art and reading; after school programs, which included art, dancing, ceramics; sewing and drama. According to their website, in 2007, Friends Neighborhood Guild offered or was affiliated with the following programs: adult education, after school enrichment program, community learning center, food pantry, neighborhood Energy Center, Philadelphia Freedom School, and a truancy prevention program.

Bibliography:

“A Century Plus of Service, 1879-1989,” [Box 6, Folder 44], Friends Neighborhood Guild records, Accession 1008, Temple University Urban Archives.