Amawalk Friends Meeting House is located on Quaker Church Road in Yorktown Heights, New York, United States.

Architecturally the meeting house shows some signs of Greek Revival influence, also unusual for Quaker buildings.

[5] The headstones of those graves strongly reflect Quaker burial practices, and thus the cemetery is included in the listing as a contributing resource.

An architecturally sympathetic First Day School building added when meetings resumed in the 1970s is non-contributing due to its newness.

The 2.9-acre (1.2 ha) lot on which the meeting house, First Day school and cemetery are located is on the west side of Quaker Church Road,[2] also at that point the boundary between the towns of Yorktown and Somers to its east.

[6] Topographically the area consists of small low hills with occasional narrow depressions, often filled by creeks or wetlands, in between.

Behind them is a cleared power line right-of-way closely paralleled by the North County Trailway rail trail.

[7] A short gravel driveway gives access to the property from the road, passing under the century-old oak and maple trees that shade and screen most of the lot.

At its base is a fieldstone foundation; a single brick chimney pierces the center of the slate-shingled gable roof.

A hip roofed porch runs the length of the first story's south (front) facade at ground level; on the west end is a small shed-roofed clapboard-sided one-story one-bay addition.

[2] Two separate entrances with paneled wooden double doors are located just inside the outermost windows of the ground floor underneath the porch.

In its middle are three plain wooden benches with curved backs arranged in a square pattern, facing outward.

[2] Both entrances open into the main meeting room, with cushioned wooden benches similar to those on the porch arranged facing the center.

[2] Many of the headstones reflect the Quaker virtue of simplicity and are devoid of funerary art, save for some on the southwest corner with a weeping willow design.

As Dissenters, their opposition to maintaining a leadership hierarchy or indeed any clergy at all was considered blasphemous and heretical,[2] and members often met in secret.

Many emigrated to the American colonies, where they could be a little more relaxed, but although their numbers grew they did not feel safe being open in their meetings until the mid-18th century.

In 1783 a member who had bought a slave in order to set him free asked the meeting to consider whether such an act was appropriate; the next month it was decided that it was not.

The Amawalk meeting nevertheless followed the strong and growing abolitionist stance of American Quakers; by the next year it reported that none of its members owned slaves.

[9] Also, its design shows some of influence of the contemporary Greek Revival style, in the use of clapboard siding below the roof eave on the south (front) facade, creating a frieze.

[2] Membership began to decline in the 1840s, due in part to the effects of the schism on the meetings and the general fragmentation of society.

At some point around this time, the shed addition was built on to the western side of the meeting house to serve as a cloakroom and privy.

The Amawalk meeting also improved its amenities, purchasing two wood-burning stoves, one of which remains, to heat the building during colder weather in 1883.

Another 19th-century addition, the porch, reflects contemporary architectural trends in the curved brackets that connect its roof and the wooden support pillars, a Victorian touch that like the clapboard frieze reflects contemporary architectural trends, unusually for Quaker meeting houses.

[2] While the members remained politically and socially active, writing the state legislature in 1882 in support of prohibition, these measures were not enough to stop the decline.

[2] The remaining members continued their activism, again writing the legislature in protest of its passage of legislation that lowered New York's age of consent to 13 later that year, and urging that it replace the death penalty with life imprisonment.

They collected books for Faith Cabin Libraries serving African-American communities in Georgia and South Carolina.

During World War II, they knitted patchwork quilts to be sent overseas and, afterwards, sponsored two of the Hiroshima Maidens who came to the United States for plastic surgery on their injuries.

In 2008 Cornell, who had founded the International Center for Photography during the intervening years, was laid to rest alongside his brother.

[2] Four years after Amawalk closed, the Hicksites and Orthodox Quakers fully reconciled and ended the schism after a century and a half.

Along with the spiritual quests by baby boomers that have been called the Fourth Great Awakening, that helped rekindle interest in the Society.