Completed in 1775, the two-story brick meeting hall was built for and still privately owned by the Carpenters' Company of the City and County of Philadelphia, the country's oldest extant craft guild. The First Continental Congress met here in 1774 and it was the location of the Pennsylvania Provincial Conference in June 1776. Their proceedings officially declared the Province of Pennsylvania's independence from the British Empire and established the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, mobilized the Pennsylvania militia for the American Revolutionary War, set up the machinery for the Pennsylvania Provincial Convention (July 15 – September 28, 1776) which framed the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776, and enabled the United States Declaration of Independence to proceed. It was briefly occupied in 1777 by the British Army during the war.