The First Continental Congress met at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia in 1774.
Delegates from twelve of the thirteen American colonies gathered there from September 5 to October 26. Georgia did not send delegates because Loyalist sentiment remained strong there. The meeting was called in response to punitive British laws known as the Intolerable Acts, imposed after the Boston Tea Party.
Carpenters' Hall was the meeting place of the Carpenters' Company of the City and County of Philadelphia, a guild founded in 1724. Its relatively private setting made it suitable for a politically sensitive gathering. The Congress later moved to Philadelphia's Pennsylvania State House, now Independence Hall, for the Second Continental Congress.
The First Continental Congress did not declare independence. Instead, it adopted the Continental Association, which organized a colonial boycott of British goods, and sent a petition to King George III. Its work helped create cooperation among the colonies before the Revolutionary War began.