Old Chappaqua Historic District

Old Chappaqua is a small cluster of late 18th and early 19th century farm buildings along Quaker Road in Chappaqua, New York. The district covers about 33 acres of wooded, hilly land and centers on a wood-frame Quaker Meeting House built in 1753, where Friends still meet weekly. Around it stand twelve simple, rectangular wood-frame structures, including farmhouses, a currying shop, tenant house and barns, typical of rural domestic building in Westchester County. Quakers began settling the area, then called Shapequaw, around 1730, and John Reynolds donated two acres for the meetinghouse and burial ground. The hamlet remained largely agricultural through the 1800s. When the Harlem Railroad arrived in 1846 east of the settlement, the depot drew growth elsewhere, leaving the old center intact despite later suburban development. The Meeting House is also noted as one of few similar Friends meeting houses in southern New York with remarkable architectural integrity inside and out.