Friends Meeting House at Herbert Hoover National Historic Site

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In the mid-1800s when West Branch, Iowa, was settled, Quakers made up the majority of the residents (the Hoovers were Quakers). Quakers, which is a nickname, are members of the Religious Society of Friends, and each congregation is called a Meeting. For example, the first Meeting in West Branch was the West Branch Preparative Meeting. (Preparative, Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly refer to a level of authority in the religion’s structure, with Preparative being the local level). Where the group meets for religious and other activities is its House. Thus, the building where the West Branch Preparative Meeting held religious services would be called the West Branch Preparative Meeting House.

The Friends Meeting House (a generic name) that stands today at Herbert Hoover National Historic Site is a building that existed when the Hoovers lived in West Branch—they attended services in it. However, the original building used for the Quaker meetings was the West Branch Schoolhouse built in 1853. Prior to that, members had been meeting in private residences. The schoolhouse was first and foremost a school, but because most of the construction money came from the Quaker residents of West Branch, they were allowed to hold their services in it.

The first official meeting house, which is the one at the park, was built between 1855 and 1857 on the other side of Main Street from Herbert Hoover National Historic Site. The extended construction time was due to the difficulty of getting wood and other materials in a timely manner. The meeting house remained in operation until 1916, at which time the Friends at West Branch decided to build a new meeting house on the property.

The old building was sold to J. C. Crew and moved to a lot he owned on the other side of Downey Street. Crew leased it to two men who turned it into the Pastime Theater, both for theatrical performances and movies. In the 1930s, the theater closed and the building became an automotive repair garage. It was purchased in the 1940s by Lee and Bessie Oostendorp. Lee continued to operate a garage, and Bessie set up a gift store in one section.

By the mid-1930s, the Hoovers had purchased and restored the Birthplace Cottage and were looking to recreate a typical 1880s Iowa farm town similar to what Hoover grew up in. In 1939, the Hoover Birthplace Society (HBS) was formed to oversee the cottage and perhaps add other buildings to the grounds. A 1948 Master Plan proposed building a replica of a Friends meeting house, since the Quaker religion was part of Hoover’s life in West Branch. However, Hoover himself nixed the idea in 1955, stating that there was no meeting house in the area surrounding his cottage.

In the early 1960s, Bessie Oostendorp was awarded the garage / meeting house in a divorce settlement, and she wanted to sell it. The Hoover Birthplace Foundation (HBF; new name for the HBS) raised money to purchase the building because, surprisingly, Hoover was now all for adding it to the park. The HBF owned three lots on Downey Street just south of the Birthplace Cottage, and the old meeting house was moved to this location in August 1964 (where the building is now). Renovation began immediately. This was the last major addition to the park done by the HBF, for the following year the property was turned over to the National Park Service when Herbert Hoover National Historic Site was created.

Traditional Quaker meetings were held in silence unless somebody wanted to speak, and the room was divided in half by a partition, with men on one side and women on the other. In the 1880s, there was a split in the Friends organization between the traditional Wilburites and the progressive Gurneyites (movement started by Joseph Gurney) who wanted to modernize the organization with paid oratory (sermons) and singing. This eventually led to the exiting of the traditionalists, leaving the progressives with the building.

In December 1884, the progressive Friends voted to remove the wall separating the sexes so that people could sit wherever they liked. The work was completed by April 1885, about seven months before Herbert Hoover, now an orphan, moved away to Oregon to live with relatives. In the early 1900s the building became Friends Church, as many progressive Quaker groups began referring to their places of worship as churches.

Because the meeting house had a partition when the Hoovers attended, a faithful restoration of the building back to its c. 1880 appearance meant reinstalling a partition. As luck would have it, just a few miles away is the Scattergood Quaker School that was founded in 1890. The school still had a meeting house with a partition, so the HBF agreed to fund a modernization of the building in exchange for the old benches and partition wall. So while the current furnishings and partition are not what was once in the original West Branch meeting house, they are from the 1800s.