We Love PA History!
Exploring Pennsylvania's Past, One Story at a Time
We Love PA History!
Michael Norris, Carpenters' Hall
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MICHAEL L. NORRIS Executive Director
As the Executive Director of the Carpenters’ Company of the City and County of Philadelphia, which owns and manages Carpenters’ Hall, a National Historic Landmark in Philadelphia’s historic district whose members constitute the nation’s oldest continuously operating craft guild, Michael oversees all of the Company’s programmatic and operational activities. Michael joined the Company in June 2019, after a seven-year tenure as Vice President of External Relations and Chief Strategy Officer at the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, where he oversaw the organization’s policy, advocacy and community-engagement programs and its fundraising activities. Before that, Michael served for eight years as the Executive Director of Art-Reach, which connects underserved audiences with cultural experiences. Prior to leading Art-Reach, Michael spent nine years at the Arden Theatre Company, managing all aspects of fundraising, marketing, public relations and community outreach. Michael began his career in nonprofit administration as the Assistant Development Director at Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Theatre, the nation’s oldest continuously operating theatre and a National Historic Landmark. He started his professional career in editing and publishing, working as an editorial researcher at TV Guide magazine in Radnor, PA, and then editing the regional leadership directory Who’s Who in the Delaware Valley. A native of Chester County, PA, Michael received a B.A. in journalism from Temple University in Philadelphia. He received a certificate in fundraising from the University of Pennsylvania and has received supplemental education in nonprofit management through coursework offered by National Arts Strategies, the Fundraising School at the University of Indiana and the Stanford University Business School. He is a 2008 graduate of Leadership Philadelphia, which named him one of the region’s top 76 “Creative Connectors.” He serves on the board of PA Museums, the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance and the Histories Collaborative of Philadelphia.
To find out more about Carpenters' Company, Carpenters' Hall, and its amazing history, go to https://www.carpentershall.org/pages/story-of-carpenters-hall
Welcome to We Love PA History, the podcast where we explore the stories, people, and moments that shaped Pennsylvania and helped shaped America. I'm Connie Devoli, and each episode we'll uncover a piece of our shared past, from famous events you thought you knew to hidden stories waiting to be rediscovered right here in the Keystone State. So let's jump into today's story. Welcome to Michael Norris, who is executive director of Carpenter's Company of the City and County of Philadelphia, which owns and manages Carpenter's Hall. So before we get to Carpenter's Hall, Mr. Norris, step back and tell us what Carpenter's Company is.
SPEAKER_01So Carpenter's Company is now a professional association here in Philadelphia, but we were founded in the 18th century, 1724, to be exact. So we have a continuous history of over 300 years. Originally, we were a guild, right? A trade guild or a craft guild, very much in the model of the medieval trade guilds, you know, that were very common in Europe in the Middle Ages. In fact, we were modeled on one of those guilds called the Worshipful Company of Carpenters, which was founded in the 13th century in London, which also still exists. But our original members here in Philadelphia in the 18th century modeled this company after that one, really along the lines of what trade guilds did back then, which was to train apprentices, set standards of kind of excellence and quality, and kind of be a little bit of a community, right? Like a mutual aid society for its members. So the mission of the of the company changed over time, certainly as the building became historically significant, which we'll be talking about shortly, I suspect. But we still are an association of people who design and build things, right? Which is really fun. Our members today are architects, contractors, and engineers. And you must be one of those things in order to be a member of the Carpenter's Company to this day.
SPEAKER_00And this is a private organization, correct?
SPEAKER_01Yes. We are now structured as a private 501c3 nonprofit, but yes.
SPEAKER_00So Carpenter's Hall, where is it? What does it look like?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, you it's a you know, lovely little jewel box of a of a Georgian building. So timber frame, a brick exterior. We're located in the historic district of Philadelphia, just a block from Independence Hall, set back a little bit between chestnut and walnut in a really idyllic uh setting within Independence National Historical Park. The building was originally designed to be a guild hall, a meeting place, right, for the members of the company. So that was its original purpose. It still meets that purpose. The court the carpenter's company meets here four times a year. So in addition to, you know, where we now run the building as a museum and a historic site, it still has this layer of being the home for the Carpenter's Company.
SPEAKER_00Well, as you know, this is a podcast about Pennsylvania history first. So I'm gonna go out of chronological order a little bit and ask you first, I don't want to bury the lead, ask you first to talk about the importance of Carpenter's Hall to Pennsylvania history.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's it's really important. In fact, Carpenter's Hall in 1982 was designated the official birthplace of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, right, by the General Assembly. Um, and that's really because of a convening we hosted uh in June of 1776, so almost 250 years ago exactly, called the Pennsylvania Provincial Conference. And that was a meeting of delegates from the counties of Pennsylvania. There were 10 at that time, plus Philadelphia, the city. The city and the county of Philadelphia were separate entities until like the middle of the 19th century. These delegates from the Pennsylvania counties met here at Carpenter's Hall, and they did a couple of pretty significant things. One is they uh declared independence from Great Britain, right, as a colony, right? This is separate from what was happening at the Continental Congress right up the street. So the colony of Pennsylvania declared independence from Great Britain on June 24th, 1776, here in Carpenter's Hall. The second significant thing that the provincial conference did was establish rules and guidelines and authorize the writing of a new constitution for Pennsylvania, which became the state's very first state constitution, which was adopted a couple months later in September of 1776. So that document not only provided the initial framework of government for Pennsylvania, transitioning out of being a colony and into an independent state, but it also was really influential in other states' constitutions that were being developed at that same time, and ultimately really on the federal U.S. federal constitution, which came about about a decade later.
SPEAKER_00So did it address slavery?
SPEAKER_01So kind of yes and no. So the right to vote was in the 1776 constitution permitted by men, uh, it didn't say white men, men who owned a certain amount of property or had a certain amount of you know wealth, right? And and and not a huge amount. But so the the suffrage was pretty liberal for that time, right? I mean, and uh by the time of the state's uh second constitution, which was in 1790, not too much later, that changed, right? The word white was inserted into the description of who was eligible to vote. But uh in that very first constitution, as I said, the the right to vote was was pretty liberal, right? And that constitution also had a bill of rights, which continues to be part of Pennsylvania state constitution. So, you know, obviously prior to the federal bill of rights. So it was considered pretty progressive at the time. Some would say even radical John Adams was fairly horrifying by the Pennsylvania State Constitution, because it felt to him like it was sort of a bit too far in terms of uh democracy and actually representing the the will of the people.
SPEAKER_00Now you said this was June 1776. Oh my goodness, just a couple months later, and the whole country's history is changing, and it's all happening in that one little geographic area. Well, can can you talk about what that's like?
SPEAKER_01I mean, you know, we don't have any, you know, movie clips, unfortunately, but you can imagine that it was a pretty dynamic time, uh especially uh in this month of June leading up to July 2nd and July 4th, when the Continental Congress had been meeting, the second Continental Congress had been meeting in the Statehouse uh since actually May of 1775. So they had already been meeting for over a year by the time we get to these these events. So, but between what was happening with the Continental Congress at uh at the Statehouse, now Independence Hall, of course, and what was happening with the provincial conference here at Carpenter's Hall, you know, I suspect it was a pretty exciting and and heady time for folks who were, you know, trying to do something really uh literally revolutionary, right? And and world-changing.
SPEAKER_00So that was 1776, and you mentioned that was the second Continental Congress that was meeting at Independent or Independence Hall. So let's step back to the first Continental Congress, and that's where Carpenter's Hall comes in.
SPEAKER_01Yes, of course. I mean, we're we're we're probably most known if people know us for anything, it's for hosting the first Continental Congress, right? Which was in 1774. So, you know, sort of uh almost two years before, you know, the the events we were just just talking about. So the first Continental Congress took place in the autumn of 1774, and it was really a direct response to both the Boston Tea Party, which had occurred in December of 1773, and the laws that were passed by Parliament to punish Massachusetts for the destruction of the tea, those laws that we came to call the quote intolerable acts, which did some pretty radical things, right? They shut down the port of Boston, they disbanded the colonial legislature in Boston, and those uh actions and they sent in troops, right? Boston was occupied, and uh they really set alarm bells off across all the colonies, right, uh, for fear of possible, you know, duplication of those things. And and some of that stuff happened, right? Uh Virginia House of Burgesses uh voted to just simply sort of do a vote of in support of the people of Boston suffering under these laws. And their legislature got shut down too, right? Just just because of that, right? So there was a sense that it was time for the colonies to come together and and try to figure out how uh collectively there could be uh a response to try to stop these these kinds of actions and and address these grievances. And that's really what the first continental congress in intended to do.
SPEAKER_00Our guest is Michael Norris. He is with the organization that manages Carpenter's Hall, which is our topic today. And you're listening to We Love PA History, which is a new podcast of the Pennsylvania Heritage Foundation. I thought a quote from John Adams, and I'd like to get your thoughts on it, which I'm sure you've heard a million times. But he wrote this. At 10, the delegates all met at the city tavern and walked into the Carpenter's Hall where they took a view of the room and of the chamber where is an excellent library. The general cry was that this was a good room. And the question was put whether we are satisfied with this room, and it passed in the affirmative. So first go to the bar.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Right. Well, the uh the the other thing that I love about that quote is you know, they they sh the delegates showed up uh in Philadelphia before, I mean, the the decision of where the meeting was going to play take place hadn't even been decided yet.
SPEAKER_00Exactly.
SPEAKER_01Right. And they and they showed up, right? So City Tavern was actually one of the places that they were also considering to hold the meeting. So we can imagine that they started their tour there. Um who knows what they ate and drank, and then came over to Carpenter's Hall. So his reference to the library is another wonderful historical thing that isn't well known about Carpenter's Hall, but Franklin's library company in Philadelphia, that's what Adams is referring to when he says there's an excellent library. They actually, the library company of Philadelphia actually rented the second floor of Carpenter's Hall all through the revolution and the and the kind of post-revolutionary period. And as as you can tell from that quote, the the presence of the library in the building was one of the things that sort of pushed the decision over the top for them to meet here. And we do know that uh there's there's records of this at the library company, that uh the uh lending privileges for the library company were extended to the delegates of the First Continental Congress, even though they weren't, you know, most of them weren't members, right? Because they weren't living here in Philadelphia. So they weren't able to normally they would not, as you know, non-members, they wouldn't have been able to get books out of the library, but the library company made a special exception uh for the delegates who were in town for uh the Congress.
SPEAKER_00So the first Continental Congress convened, set the scene for us. What did it look like?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so there were a total of 56 delegates. They represented 12 of the 13 colonies. Uh, Georgia did not participate in the first Congress. So they were dealing with a little uh skirmish on their frontier with the Native American population, and they were feeling a sort of reliant on the British to help them deal with that, you know, some from sort of a military point of view. They thought it might sort of upset the apple cart in their efforts to try to deal with that situation if they participated in in the Congress. They did subsequently sort of endorse the actions that came out of the first Congress, but they were not physically present during those seven weeks.
SPEAKER_00So what did it look like inside the room?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, so uh for folks who who may have been to Carpenter's Hall, it didn't look uh like it does now, right? So there were some fairly significant changes to the space in the late 18th century, in the 1790s, and then in the 19th century. So at the time of the first Continental Congress, the the space was divided into two meeting rooms. So half of our small building, which is 50 feet square, um what you know, was dedicated to the meeting uh of the Congress, right? So they had subcommittees and you know would break out into different conversations and discuss the sort of bulk of the of the conversation was about uh organizing uh what became known as the Continental Association, which was a coalition of the colonies that agreed to a trade embargo, right? So their primary strategy for sort of getting England to sort of uh deal with the situation was through some economic pressure, right? So there was a the trade embargo was uh controlled um or stopped, you know, importing and exporting of goods to and from from England. And of course, that trade relationship was essentially the very reason that the colonies existed, right? Was to provide raw materials for production in in England, right? And and the and the sort of circular emotion of raw goods to England and then uh Finnish goods coming back to to the colony. So disrupting that trade, they thought was, you know, a pretty significant way to try to get the situation resolved. So they did that through this document called the Articles of Association, which we have sort of completely forgotten about as a country, but uh does set the stage for the Declaration of Independence. It actually contained, you know, there's a list of grievances that was discussed and agreed to as well that that is quite similar to the one that ended up being in the Declaration of Independence. So, you know, it did kind of set the stage for for what came later, not in a sort of military way, because of course at this point in 1774, there is no war, right? The revolution hasn't begun yet. So they're really trying to find a kind of a diplomatic uh resolution and to assert their rights as as British subjects, right? Not as a new country, right? So that obviously changed by the time we get to a second Congress. But but that sense of the coalition and the unity that formed by the acts of the first Congress really made, you know, made the future actions possible. So we like to quote David McCullough, wonderful native Pennsylvanian historian who called Carpenter's Hall the acorn of American democracy. And really that's because of this reason, right? That these delegates formed this coalition and created this unity that you know sort of ultimately led to the United States.
SPEAKER_00They elected a president. They did, yes. Randolph. I'm sorry, it's not a name I've ever heard of. Right.
SPEAKER_01Well, so I know poor poor Peyton. So he was one of the delegates from Virginia serving along with folks like George Washington and Patrick Henry, who maybe you have heard of. But he was from a very prestigious family, actually, in Virginia, the Randolph family. You can visit his house if you go to Colonial Williamsburg to this day. But that was again another sort of part of the strategy of um engaging Virginia specifically because they were the largest colony by land size and the most populated. And, you know, Samuel Adams and John Adams, the Massachusetts folks, didn't want it to feel like it was all about them, right? Even though they had sort of been the place where most of the stuff had been happening. They realized that if the goal of the Congress was to bring, you know, everyone together, a smart strategy would be have uh someone like Peyton Randolph in in the leadership role. So he was elected to be the president of the first Congress. He actually was elected to be the president of the second continental congress as well, but he tragically died in 1775, right as the second Congress was getting up and running and dealing with forming an army and all those kinds of things. So his successor was a guy we we probably all have heard of, named John Hancock, right? Who got to become very famous by signing the Declaration of Independence, which our our Mr. Randolph did not get to do, sadly.
SPEAKER_00So if you go to Carpenter's Hall, there is an inscription over this, I think it's the south door of the assembly room. And it says, Within these walls, is this correct? Henry, Hancock, and Adams inspired the delegates of these colonies with verb and sinew, word I don't know, or the toils of war.
SPEAKER_01Sinew. Well, that's muscle, I guess. Right, right, right.
SPEAKER_00But the names of the of the some of the people who were at that first continental congress in that room in Carpenter's Hall. John Adams, yes, John Jay, first John Dickinson, yeah. People know Dickinson College. Yes, of course.
SPEAKER_01One of our great Pennsylvania delegates, of course.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, Edward Rutledge, the signer of the of the Declaration of Independence, Patrick Henry, Roger Sherman, Samuel Adams, amazing names of history.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, and you know, again, we we tend to think that these guys all like, you know, knew each other and you know were hanging out, right? And and they ultimately were, I guess, but before, you know, as the first Congress, many of them had never met each other, right? They were just meeting for the first time and building those friendships. And, you know, Adams traveled to Philadelphia. It was the first time he left Boston, right, in his entire life, right, to come to Philadelphia. So, you know, there is that also that kind of personal sort of social dynamic uh of what was happening, right? That again really mattered, right? Because it created these bonds and created trust and a sense of connection, right? Where they were kind of all, you know, in it together.
SPEAKER_00At the end of the first continental congress, did they feel that they were successful?
SPEAKER_01Well, they achieved this creation of the Continental Association and the terms of this kind of trade embargo, and they had codified this list of grievances, but they knew it wouldn't work, right, unless there was some change, right? If something happened, if the you know intolerable acts were repealed, if there was some change in mindset or behavior from parliament. So they sent all these documents off to England to get a response, right? And they had to wait, of course, because there was no, you know, email or uh whatever. So it took months, right? So the last thing that they actually did at the first Congress was decide to meet again, right? If the response from what they sent over was not to their liking. Well, we never found out what that response was. There was no response because by the time that the second Congress convened, the American Revolution was was underway, right? So that obviously sort of changed the changed the landscape a bit.
SPEAKER_00There's some fabulous things that happened at Carpenter's Hall outside of what we've talked about so far. And the next one I want to talk about is what happened the following year over Christmas, 1775. Tell the story.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's another one of our favorites. So involving our own Mr. Franklin or Dr. Franklin, right? So who Who unfortunately did not attend the first Continental Congress because he was in London, right, until about I think April or May of 1775. So, but he he returned to Philadelphia in 1775, joined the Second Continental Congress, and joined a committee with John Jay and a few other folks whose purpose was to seek out alliances, right? For you know, it was it seemed quite clear that if the colonists were going to win this war against Britain, you know, we would need allies to do that, right? So France being the the primary target of of those efforts, given their long-standing uh rivalry with with England and the fact that England had defeated them in the in the Seven Years' War. Right. So Franklin arranged for a secret emissary, sometimes called a spy, which makes it sound very dramatic. But the the French spy came to Carpenter's Hall in December, as you say, of 1775, the week between Christmas and New Year's, and met in Carpenter's Hall with Franklin and John Jay, and a wonderful man who has also been forgotten to history, a guy named Francis Damon, who was actually the librarian of the library company, right? And because he was an immigrant from France, and the guy, the spy who was coming over from France didn't know English, Franklin recruited Damon to be the interpreter, right? So, and they met in Carpenter's Hall on our second floor. Actually, oh, you can't see my video, but actually right outside my office in a in a in a room here on the second floor where the where the library company at that time was was actually was actually housed. So it really became a sort of foundational moment in our attempt to secure an alliance with with France. So they had three nights of meetings, and this the spy whose name was Bon Voulard went back to France, filed a report, and basically said, you know, this could work, right? They have they have enough in place. We if we help them, you know, it would it would be to our advantage. And of course, that's ultimately what happened, right? So that report triggered the invitation for Franklin to actually go to France, which he did the following year in 1776, and then in 1778, the alliance with France, you know, was actually signed, right? And then all the the the gunpowder and the soldiers and Lafayette and you know all that stuff's happened, right? But the the the the seeds of all that again were were here at Carpenter's Hall.
SPEAKER_00Fast forward 20-some years, and uh Carpenter's Hall becomes the Bank of the United States. And 1798, a robbery?
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes, yeah. So we so you know what in the in the 1790s, of course, Philadelphia was the capital, right, of the brand new United States, right? So there were all these new federal agencies. There's a building adjacent to Garbiner's Hall called New Hall that originally housed the War Department. And in our building on the first floor of the Bank of the United States, chartered by Alexander Hamilton, operated for a number of years while their building, which is right across the street from us, was was under construction, right? So they moved out into their building like 1796 or so, and then we rented that the our same space to a different bank called the Bank of Pennsylvania, which was where this, which was the victim of this robbery that occurred in uh in 1798, and as far as we know, is the first recorded bank robbery in in US history, and involved a fairly significant amount of money, I think $160,000, if I'm remembering correctly, back then, right? So like millions now, and was also became there, you know, there's a whole other side of the story where they wrongfully accused someone of committing the crime, he didn't do it. Uh so there was then ultimately the the culprit of the of the crime. There were there were a couple of folks involved, but one of them was was actually a member of the carpenter's company. So uh it was a it was a little bit of an inside job, but um, but this guy who was wrongfully accused ended up going to jail, even though he had a pretty great alibi. He even he physically wasn't even in the city when the robbery occurred, but he was still imprisoned. And he wrote a sort of a little pamphlet about his trials as someone who was wrongfully imprisoned. He sued Pennsylvania for wrongful imprisonment. So there's a whole sort of legal jurisprudence because again, everything was new then, right? So the fact that someone could actually sue for being wrongfully imprisoned, that was like kind of a new thing, right? So uh he won the guy, the the money was ultimately returned. Yeah, so the guy and the the folks who did do the robbery returned the money. I guess all was was right with the world. And and Patrick Lyon was freed from prison and wrote this book and kind of went on the lecture circuit, and he sort of became a little bit of a celebrity.
SPEAKER_00Uh and my understanding is that he used the money to commission a portrait of himself. Is that right?
SPEAKER_01No, there yes, actually a couple of portraits, because one of them is here in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the other one is in Boston at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. And it's called Pat Lyon at the Forge. He was a blacksmith, that was his trade, and he was the one who had made the iron gate, right? That was on the vault of the bank, which is why they because there, because there was no sign of forced entry, you know, they figured, well, the guy who built the gate must have had an extra key or something. So so that's why he got accused. But it's actually a love, a wonderful painting because he uh is even though he sort of became he did up what he did other things too. He invented early versions of fire trucks, and he was sort of a fascinating guy. But um in this painting, there's like a little thought bubble up in the top, and you can see the Walnut Street jail, which is where he was, you know, imprisoned, is right in the in the painting.
SPEAKER_00Michael Norris, we are quickly running out of time, but I want to give you the opportunity to talk about what people can see at Carpenter's Hall in this 250th anniversary year.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, I mean, we're doing a lot of programming around the Pennsylvania Provincial Conference, really through the rest of this year. And, you know, we'll be in just in the hall itself. We have, you know, artifacts from the first Continental Congress, wonderful content about the history of the Cardinals Company and its impact on Philadelphia's development and construction. So it's it's a very unique and uh special place.
SPEAKER_00What is the Young People's Continental Congress?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's a wonderful education program we started in in 2024 to commemorate the first Congress. You know, it's a weeklong history and civics education program where high school students and teachers from around the country come to Philadelphia. They have sessions with scholars and historians inside Carpenter's Hall. They go on field trips to, you know, our wonderful neighbors, the Museum of the American Revolution and the Constitution Center, and of course, Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. So they get a real immersion into the founding of the country and the and the kind of principles and values that that drove that. And they they come from all over the country. So it's a really wonderful experience uh for them. And obviously we're we're thrilled, thrilled to host them.
SPEAKER_00When is when can people come to Carpenter's Hall? When is it open? What does it cost?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so it costs nothing, right? So we're free. So and we're open every day except Monday from 10 a.m. to to 4 p.m., right? So yes, folks should come check it out.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much. Michael Norris is the executive director of Carpenter's Company of the City and County of Philadelphia, which owns and manages the building, which is our topic for today's conversation, Carpenter's Hall. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01Thank you.
SPEAKER_00And that's today's story from We Love PA History. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow or subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and share it with someone who loves Pennsylvania as much as you do. You can help others discover these stories by leaving a quick rating or review. It really makes a difference. The We Love PA History podcast is produced by Pennsylvania Heritage Foundation, a nonprofit organization that advances awareness, understanding, and appreciation of Pennsylvania's history and heritage. The Markovski Engineering Group, Incorporated, is a proud sponsor of the Pennsylvania Heritage Foundation, which carries out its mission on behalf of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission and the Citizens of Pennsylvania. Markovski is pleased to sponsor the WeLove CA History podcast. For more information about Markovski and its commitment to Pennsylvania History, visit Markovski.com atlive.com. To learn more, please photos and explore the Facebook talked about today. Visit us at CAHOIT.org. I'm coming down. Thanks for the listening. And until next time, please explore Consolingo. Because Panthers isn't just history. It's our story.
