On September 6, 2025, the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture officially kicked off its 2025-2026 program year by visiting Carpenters’ Hall in downtown Philadelphia. PSPA member Tom Stokes who is the archivist at the site hosted the event and provided a detailed overview of the history of the facility. Carpenters’ Hall was the home of the American Philosophical Society as well as the meeting place for the PSPA (founded in 1785) in its early days.

Completed in 1775, the two-story brick meeting hall was built for and is still privately owned by the Carpenters’ Company of the City and County of Philadelphia, the country’s oldest extant craft guild. It was a key meeting place for colonial delegates during the early part of the American Revolution. The First Continental Congress met at the building in 1774 and passed and signed the Continental Association.

In June 1776, it was where the Pennsylvania Provincial Conference officially declared the Province of Pennsylvania‘s independence from the British Empire and established the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

At the meeting, PSPA President Dr. Michael Fidanza also introduced members to the PSPA project for Philadelphia 250, a series of posters representing people, places, and events where PSPA history as an organization intersected with people, places, and events of early American history. The project will be rolled out to the public in early 2026.