The First Continental Congress of the Thirteen Colonies of North America met at Carpenters Hall from September 5 to October 26, 1774, as the Pennsylvania State House, later renamed Independence Hall, was being used by the moderate Provincial Assembly of Pennsylvania. It was here that Congress resolved to ban further imports of slaves and to discontinue the slave trade within the colonies, a step toward phasing out slavery in British North America. It also passed and signed the Continental Association.

In June, 1776, it was where the Pennsylvania Provincial Conference 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 from July 15 to September 28 in 1776, which framed the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 and enabled the Declaration of Independence to be written and ultimately adopted. It was briefly occupied in 1777 by the British Army during the war.

The meeting hall served as a hospital for both British and American troops in the American Revolutionary War, and other Philadelphia institutions have held meetings in Carpenters' Hall, including Ben Franklin's Library Company of Philadelphia, the American Philosophical Society, and the First and Second Banks of the United States.