[3] The Association intended to build one or more schools based on the Monitorial System of instruction recently developed by Andrew Bell and Joseph Lancaster.

To accommodate the school's rapid growth, the Association raised $7000 to construct a new building on Pegg Street in the Northern Liberties.

[9] The Association of Friends, believing that the problem of educating poor white children was now being adequately addressed in Philadelphia, closed the Adelphi School that year.

[6] The Association thereafter turned its attention to the problem of educating black children in the city, and established a new school on Gaskill Street in 1822.

[10] In 1825, the Adelphi School began renting space in a schoolhouse belonging to the Pennsylvania Abolition Society on Cherry Street.

This school operated with the goal of improving "the moral, social, industrial and domestic conditions" of the African American population of Philadelphia.

In 1978, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places, in recognition of its architectural, educational, religious, and humanitarian significance.