The Advance Lodge cornerstone went down on November 20, 1915, after forty-eight years of waiting and fifty-seven days from the opening of bids. What happened next is harder to recover.
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The Advance Lodge cornerstone was laid on November 20, 1915, fifty-seven days after the trustees opened construction bids for a temple on Grand Avenue in Astoria.
For forty-eight years Advance Lodge No. 635 had found reasons to wait. It waited through two panics, a landlord who wanted it gone, and a building committee that could not raise the money.
Then, in the autumn of 1915, it stopped waiting.
The trustees opened bids on September 24. Ground was broken on September 27. On Saturday afternoon, November 20, the cornerstone went into the wall.
This article is about the speed of that autumn and what the lodge and its guests did once the stone was down.
The ceremony itself has its own article. The refreshments that followed are harder to recover.
Five Years of Delay, Then Fifty-Seven Days
The slow part came first.
On December 7, 1909, the trustees were authorized to buy a lot on the south side of Grand Avenue, about a hundred feet east of Van Alst Avenue, for $4,000.
The lodge did not have the money, and one of the brethren lent it.
Title passed in February 1910. The debt on the lot was cleared by January 1912.
A Committee of Eleven formed that April put the building at $13,500 and won authority to issue $15,000 in four percent bonds.
Then the money stalled.
In 1914 a bond committee tried what it called a Whirlwind Campaign. Its members drove from one brother’s house to the next in John W. Owen’s three-seat Cadillac, with a goal of sixty dollars a head.
About $12,700 came in.
The younger brethren, losing patience, replaced the old building committee.
The new committee moved quickly. It opened bids on September 24, 1915, and H. H. Vought and Company won the contract at $15,989.
Ground was broken three days later.
Less than eight weeks after the bids were opened, the stone went in.
The project had taken years to finance. The interval from bids to cornerstone was under two months.
The building was not finished that day. The Brooklyn Eagle gave an expected completion date of about February.
The fair that opened the temple began on Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, a hundred and fifty-six days after the cornerstone.
The Advance Masonic Temple article follows the building beyond that opening week.
Refreshments at a Hall Without a Name
The afternoon itself is told in the cornerstone article.
About 800 Masons had marched behind the Mecca Temple Band. Grand Master George Freifeld laid the stone, Henry Martin read the lodge’s history, and Henry C. Johnson gave the oration.
Then the Eagle’s report stops.
The lodge’s own history carries on, but the surviving transcription is badly garbled.
It places the crowd at a firemen’s hall for refreshments and speeches. It does not give a reliably readable account of which hall, how many people came, what was served, or who spoke.
The sources in hand call it refreshments. They do not establish a formal dinner or banquet.
The firemen’s hall offers a possible lead.
By 1923 the Exempt Firemen’s Association had its home across Grand Avenue from the temple.
That makes it a place to investigate, not an identification to adopt.
A directory or a Sanborn map might settle the question. For now, the refreshments have a place in the day’s sequence but no confirmed address.
Other Cornerstones, Other Tables
Advance was not new to the routine.
In 1906 it was the only lodge invited to attend the Island City cornerstone ceremony in a body.
The Grand Lodge opened in Smithsonian Hall, walked to the site on Jackson Avenue, and held a plain ceremony at Grand Master Townsend Scudder’s request.
Afterward, the lodge and its guests returned to Smithsonian Hall for a banquet.
Advance had been present for a day that joined a public ceremony to a meal.
In 1890 Advance laid the cornerstone of the Union Church at Ditmars Avenue and Albert Street in Steinway, with William Steinway as chairman of ceremonies.
Martin made a point of it in his 1915 address. The lodge knew the business of a cornerstone day.
The 1920 Mizpah cornerstone in Elmhurst is documented differently.
The money-raising event there was a bazaar held later in the unfinished temple. The sources in hand record no meal for cornerstone day itself.
That is too small a sample to establish a general custom.
It does show why the hours after a ceremony deserve attention. A cornerstone account may end at the stone even when the gathering continued elsewhere.
Advance’s 1915 account preserves that continuation, but not its menu.
A Borough in a Hurry
The lodge’s patience looks different against its surroundings.
Martin described the Astoria of 1866 as a village that reached the world by steamboat.
By 1915 it was part of Greater New York, and the lodge’s roll had grown with it.
Advance had 97 Master Masons in 1900, 329 on cornerstone day by Martin’s count, and 377 in 1916.
The streets were changing too.
In March 1909 the lodge turned down an option on a site at Flushing Avenue and Fourth Avenue.
Its later history observed that a temple there would have been demolished when Astoria Boulevard was widened.
A 1923 description of the Grand Avenue neighborhood has Van Alst Avenue, a hundred feet wide, planned as the district’s main street, with the elevated station four blocks away.
The geography article follows those old street names and the places the lodges chose.
The opening fair in April 1916 showed how far Advance’s reach had grown.
Delegations came from more than two hundred lodges. Boy Scouts met visitors at the Manhattan ferry to walk them to the building. Borough President Connolly spoke at the opening.
A lodge that had spent nearly half a century in rooms over a shoe store, a tinsmith, and a tavern was now receiving visitors from across the city.
The hurry did not stop at the door.
After the war the lodge struggled to keep pace with its petitions. Astoria Lodge No. 963 followed in 1919 and King David Lodge No. 994 a few years later, both with Advance’s approval.
The temple eventually housed all three.
The Advance Lodge history follows that growth beyond the building campaign.
For one autumn, the pace of construction caught up with the pace of the neighborhood.
The cornerstone sits to the left of the temple door at 21-14 30th Avenue, with 1867 on one side of the square and compasses and 1915 on the other.
The record has not yet yielded the refreshments’ menu, the speakers, or the hall’s name. The stone is easier to find.
Sources and Notes
Contemporary Cornerstone Report
Brooklyn Eagle, November 21, 1915, p. 81.
Lodge Histories
Henry Martin, “Historical Data of Advance Lodge No. 635,” read at the cornerstone ceremony, November 20, 1915.
The History of Advance Lodge No. 635, date to be confirmed.
Comparative Ceremonies and Neighborhood Coverage
Brooklyn Eagle, September 8, 1906, for the Island City cornerstone and banquet.
Brooklyn Daily Times, December 31, 1919, and October 25, 1920, for the Mizpah cornerstone announcement and later bazaar.
Times Union, March 11, 1923, for the neighborhood description.
Grand Lodge Records
Grand Lodge of New York records for Advance Lodge’s charter date.
[Before publication: complete the lodge-history citation, identify the underlying coverage for the April 1916 fair, and verify the cornerstone’s position and inscription against a photograph.]
Note 1: Dates, Names, Figures, and the Missing Meal
Advance Lodge’s charter date, July 2, 1867, follows Grand Lodge of New York records.
The bid date of September 24, 1915, the September 27 groundbreaking, and the $15,989 contract come from the lodge history.
There are fifty-seven elapsed days from September 24 to November 20, 1915. That interval begins with the opening of bids, not with groundbreaking.
There are a hundred and fifty-six elapsed days from November 20, 1915, to April 24, 1916. The draft’s figure of 155 has been corrected.
The $15,989 contract, the earlier building estimates, and the Eagle’s figure of about $18,000 refer to different accounts or stages. They should not be treated as interchangeable final costs. The companion cornerstone and temple pages discuss the broader cost discrepancies.
The refreshments account comes from a badly garbled passage in the lodge history. The Eagle’s report ends with the ceremony.
The available material does not establish the hall’s name, attendance at the refreshments, menu, or speakers. The title’s “dinner” is an editorial description, not a verified description of the meal. The body uses the source’s term, “refreshments.”
The Exempt Firemen’s Association appears across the street from the temple in a 1923 description. No source used here identifies its building as the hall visited in 1915.
Martin counts 329 Master Masons on the roll on cornerstone day. The lodge history gives 97 for 1900 and 377 for 1916. These are counts from different years, not competing totals for the same date.
The 1906 banquet at Smithsonian Hall comes from the Eagle. The 1920 Mizpah bazaar comes from the Times. They are included as comparisons, not proof of a universal post-cornerstone custom.
The identification of the officiating officers at Advance’s ceremony follows the supplied cornerstone account. The companion article addresses the other conflicts in the ceremony and charter material.
Start Here · Series Hub · Timeline · Previous Article: To Be Assigned · Next Article: To Be Assigned · Related Directory: Advance Members · Related Member Profiles: To Be Assigned
Related Reading
Advance Lodge No. 635 and the Laying of Its Cornerstone
James Prowse and the Advance Lodge No. 635 cornerstone. Profile link to be added.
Advance Lodge No. 635: Astoria’s First Masonic Lodge
The Advance Masonic Temple in Astoria: A Lodge Building That Endured
Island City Lodge No. 586 and the Laying of Its Cornerstone
How This Series Is Researched: Sources for Queens Lodge History
