“Sadsbury Meetinghouse, Pine Street, east side, south of Newport Avenue; 1901; two story, three bay stone Romanesque Revival church; recessed porch with arched stone apertures; built as new location for worshippers at Sadsbury Friends’ Meetinghouse east of Christiana; 1901 datestone,” Our Present Past, Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster County.

  C. Emlen Urban is Lancaster County’s most celebrated homegrown architect. This plain, unadorned meetinghouse is not typical of his designs, because his buidings often feature exuberant classical ornament. His work often showcases a smorgasbord of architectural decoration. Less was not always more, in his vocabulary.
But Emlen Urban knew Quakers value simplicity. So he created this meetinghouse to reflect the Quaker esthetic: “Of the Best Sort but Plain.” This unadorned building feels minimalist and beautifully crafted.
In the 1970s Christiana Mennonite Church purchased this building, after the Quaker congregation returned to their original meetinghouse on Simmonstown Road. Today the church is nondenominational. Mennonites easily felt at home in this Quaker building, because they are theology cousins of the Friends. Minimalist Quaker meetinghouses are architecture cousins of Mennonite meetinghouses.