The history of the Scarsdale Historical Society's association with the 1828 Quaker Meeting House dates back to 1976, when Praydun Manocherian phoned to offer the building, which was being used as a garage on his property at Griffen Avenue and Weaver Street, as a "totally unexpected" gift to the Society.

"Barrie and I were invited to go to the Manocherian property on Griffen Avenue with Eda, Stun and others to look at the Quaker Meeting House. When we first saw it, it was being used as a garage... After looking around, it didn't take long to decide the building was a bit of history that deserved to be preserved."

- Gloria Mabie (Recording Secretary in 1976) in the 1990 Dinner Journal

"Our hope of moving the 1828 Quaker Meeting House in sections collapsed when we began to take the old structure apart. It became necessary to build a new wooden skeleton and then add to it as much of the original Quaker Meeting House as we could save-the old bricks in the chimney, the old windows and doors, some of the siding. The finished building may now resemble a new house, but it is measured to the inch the same size as the original."

- Eda Newhouse, President's Address, Annual Fall Meeting, October 26, 1977

"Members of the Religious Society of Friends were among the first settlers of Scarsdale in 1723, when John Cornwall (an early version of the Cornell name) started farming on some of the land he bought ten years earlier," writes Mary Ellen (Mickey) Singsen, our Quaker Advisor and historian of the present-day Scarsdale Friends' Meeting. The Quakers erected their first house of worship in Scarsdale in 1768, when they moved the 1739 Mamaroneck Meeting House "on the Westchester Path, now the Boston Post Road, to a wooded lot on Weaver Street at Griffen Avenue."

According to Mickey, about one-third of colonial Scarsdale's residents were part of the Quaker community. In addition to Cornell, many families had names still familiar to us because streets and other places in Scarsdale, Greenburgh, New Rochelle and White Plains were named after them, including Griffen, Secor, Tompkins, Carpenter, Haviland, Burling, Palmer, Carhart and Ferris.

In 1828, a theological dispute led to a split between the "Orthodox", who "placed great stress on the Scriptures, were evangelical in tone and emphasized the historical Christ" and the "Hicksites", named after Elias Hicks of Long Island, who "relied on the authority of more mysical Inward Light as that part of God which is in every person" (Singsen, "The Quaker Way in Old Westchester"; pamphlet, 1982). The split, which lasted until 1955, divided many families; lists in Helen Hultz's "Scarsdale Story: a Heritage History" show members of the Cornell, Griffen, Palmer and nearly every other Quaker family of that era on both lists.

"Birth" of the 1828 Quaker Meeting House

Fascinating accounts of the actual split are described in the minutes of the Friends Meeting, as quoted by Helen Hultz:

"3^rd of 7th mo. [July 3] 1828: Mamaroneck preparative meeting held under the trees in the meeting house yard, in consequence of friends, being deprived of the use of their meeting house by those who have separated from us... And knowing from the report that disaffected members of our meeting have put Locks upon the doors of the meeting house and keep them locked..." Subsequent meetings, "friends still being deprived of the use of their meeting house", were held in the yard, under the trees on August 7 and in a stable on September 4.

By September 10, a remedy, noted in the minutes of the Purchase Meeting, was proposed: "Friends of Mamaroneck preparative meeting—are left at liberty to put up a suitable building in the west end of the yard for their own." Evidently those Hicksite members of the Mamaroneck meeting who had locked the doors to the Orthodox decided to comply with this directive, for on September 19 their minutes stated: "When those of our friends, who have separated themselves from our society, were about laying the foundation of a new meeting house in our front yard, we made them the following proposition... We will furnish them with a piece of ground to the west of and adjoining the school house lott containing one half as much ground as it now contained in said meeeting house lott or if they prefer it, as much land adjoining Samuel J. Cornell's, and give them good title to the same...".

By October 2, the Orthodox minutes relate, "It was united in believing it best that a building should be erected for a meeting house agreeably to the minutes of the monthly meeting, and Henry Griffen, Daniel Griffen, Elijah Tompkins, Richard Carpenter and Samuel S. Cornell are appointed to superintend the building, and they are authorized to have on the meeting's account such sum of money as may be necessary for the purpose."

Amazingly, in two months - much less time than the year it took the Historical Society in 1977 to dismantle, move and reassemble the Meeting House! -the minutes of December 4,1828 state: "The new meeting house being now completed the preparative meeting was held in it, and Samuel S. Comell and Benedict Carpenter were appointed to lake necessary care of the house and yard for one year".

In the years following, the two groups and their meeting houses existed side by side. According to Mickey Singsen's "Quakers in Scarsdale" (pamphlet, 1978) a map drawn in 1853 showed "a new road on or near the Line between the towns of Scarsdale and Mamaroneck and leading from the White Plains and Mamaroneck Road to the New Rochelle", later called Griffen Avenue. They were surrounded by a "solid row of Quaker owners". However, "in the last third of the 19^thcentury, farmers on Quaker Ridge began to sell their land. In 1871, William Cornell sold William H. Stiles the more than 157 acres which surrounded the two meeting houses. Gradually, the farmland was purchased by wealthy New Yorkers for summer residences….By 1911, the changeover was nearly complete."

20^th•Century Moves

In the early 20^th century, Singsen writes, "With only a few Quakers left on Quaker Ridge, the meeting houses were used only occasionally, so members of the Purchase Monthly Meeting, of which the Mamaroneck [Scarsdale] Preparative Meeting had always been a part, sold the land and meeting houses to the nearest neighbor, William W. Heaton, whose estate lay next to it on two sides." Heaton moved both buildings: the original Hicksite house, which had been erected in Mamaroneck in 1737 and moved to Scarsdale in 1768, was moved again, this time to Fenimore Road in Mamaroneck and used as a gardener's dwelling. The 1828 Quaker Meeting House was also moved, to what is now the comer of Griffen Avenue and Weaver Street, "and became a tool and storage shed for the Heatons." By the 1970's, it had become a garage for vintage cars, owned by the Fraydun Manocherians, who in l976 offered it to the Scarsdale Historical Society.

A report in the Society's 1982 Dinner-Dance Journal notes the physical and financial difficulties of moving the Meeting House: "In 1976, the Society received the fortuitous, but totally unexpected gift of the 1828 Quaker Meeting House." Coming as it did in the midst of the Society's efforts to restore the Cudner-Hyatt House, which had been acquired in 1974, "this was indeed an unexpected problem. Yet the Society's charter provided for the saving of important early structures. This first house of worship in the community was also to have been destroyed and its receipt was an opportunity the Society could not lightly reject." The cost of reconstruction, after dismantling and moving the building, totaled over $50,000, plus an additional $35,000 for constructing a mandated parking area to serve the two buildings, came to more than $85,000. This was raised by obtaining a second mortgage of $58,000 on the Cudner-Hyatt House, which led to the need to raise almost $25,000 annually for nine years, through Annual Fund drives.

By June 24,1977, its reconstruction completed, the Meeting House was dedicated, and on the following day, a Sunday, the Scarsdale Friends Meeting (which had been established in the early 1940's, when gas rationing made it difficult to travel to Purchase) held a worship meeeting in the restored 1828 Meeting House - for the first time in 75 years. Although much of it had to be reconstructed, as noted in Eda Newhouse's 1977 report quoted at the beginning of this article, old boards, chimneys, doors, windows and some of the original clapboard, as well as the two stepping-stones leading up to the pair of front doors, were incorporated in the structure. In June 1987, the tenth anniversary of its opening, the Society held a special ceremony to honor its donors, the Manocherian family.

New Uses

When it opened in 1977, the building housed in its lower level, as it does now, the Society's "command center"- its administrative offices, conference room and files. At that early date, before the Cudner-Hyatt House was restored, it also contained our library. Subsequently, the loft was modified to provide a caretaker's apartment. Our Museum was established on the ground floor, which was where the Friends' meetings were held (the benches were copied from old Quaker patterns). In addition to exhibitions, the Museum Gallery has a multitude of uses; among them are education programs, lectures and programs, workshops, luncheon meetings and conferences.

Fittingly, the first exhibition in the Museum, in the summer of 1977, was "Quaker Memorabilia". Since then, there have been 85 exhibitions - in just 25 years! - on a broad range of subjects, focusing on the history, culture, architecture and art of the 18^th- 20^th centuries (and now the 2st), many of them related to Scarsdale and Westchester. Our exhibitions have included selections from the collections of individuals and museums, as well as from our own collections - which range from archeological finds on the property during the restoration of the Cudner-Hyatt House to costumes, furnishings and decorative arts. Over the years, funding for our exhibitions has been received from many county, state and national arts organizations. But our greatest support, starting with the donation of the building and continuing through years of financial contributions and volunteered time and talent, had been from our community and our members.