This project received awards from the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the American Institute of Architects.

In the years before the American Civil War, it was a stronghold of the anti-slavery movement, and was the site of notable speeches from such anti-slavery activists as Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth.

The AME congregation was part of the first black independent denomination in the United States, established in Philadelphia in the early 19th century.

The nineteenth-century altered sanctuary was relatively intact, but much of the rest of the interior held little architectural significance in comparison with the exterior.

The National Park Service permitted extensive vertical and horizontal internal subdivision, provided that the developer incorporate some existing ornamental features.

On September 22, 1984 The American Institute of Architects presented the Award for Excellence in Architecture to the Charles Street Meeting House for the same project.

[9] In Pauline Hopkins' novel Contending Forces (1900), the principal character, sitting in a pew, recalls some of the building's history, including the exclusion of Blacks from the main seating area in the years before the Civil War.