A map of Queens Masonic lodge history: five selected buildings and meeting places behind Advance Service Mizpah Lodge No. 586, from Grand Street to Astoria.
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This map of Queens Masonic lodge history follows five selected sites in the lineage of Advance Service Mizpah Lodge No. 586. They are not every room the six lodges used. They are places from which to follow the branches and the buildings they shared.
Two of the five addresses are not called what they were called when the lodges first used them.
The Advance temple stands at 21-14 30th Avenue, a street that was Grand Avenue in 1915. Mizpah’s temple at 87-11 Whitney Avenue went up on Warner Avenue.
The other three sites are on Grand Street in Manhattan, where the oldest charter in the line met; Jackson Avenue in Long Island City, where Island City built; and Northern Boulevard in Flushing.
Six lodges and five consolidations are easy to lose in prose. A map lets a reader see the relationship between the branches without mistaking a lodge’s history for the history of a single building.
This page is a companion to From Manhattan to Astoria: The Geography of a Lodge Lineage. It explains where the selected sites are, who met there, and what the sources say became of the buildings.
Five Pins, Not Every Meeting Room
The lodges in this family did not each have a building.
Geba never owned one in the sources in hand. It met first in rented rooms in Jackson Heights, whose address is unknown, and then in Mizpah’s temple.
Island City gave up its own temple in 1938 and met in Mizpah’s. Service City was meeting at Mizpah’s by the late 1970s.
The shared buildings brought separate branches to the same address before consolidation joined their names.
The map is schematic. It shows the selected sites and the movements between them without making a claim about distance or scale.
[MAP INSERTION POINT: Add the schematic map here as a Squarespace Image or Embed Block. The original draft references node/49717d3f-5266. Replace this instruction with the actual map before publication.]
Read the movement arrows as changes of meeting place, not as a complete family tree.
Island City began meeting at Mizpah’s temple in 1938. Service City was meeting there by the late 1970s. The lodge formed by Island City and Mizpah joined Advance in Astoria in 1993, and Service City Geba joined the combined lodge there in 2018.
The Family Tree follows the consolidations. This map follows the places.
Grand Street and Jackson Avenue
The oldest charter represented on the map belongs to City Lodge No. 408, chartered September 1, 1856.
The lodge began in a small room in Florence Hall, then met for years in Odd Fellows’ Hall at 165–171 Grand Street.
The notices place the hall at the corner of Grand and Centre Streets. The lodge’s records describe it as between Centre and Baxter Streets. The ground is now associated with Little Italy and SoHo.
A Manhattan summons of 1866 calls the lodge room the Corinthian Room.
City Lodge did not stay on Grand Street.
It met at 594 Broadway in 1870, in the Bleecker Building at Bleecker and Morton Streets in 1873, at 33 Union Square in 1874, and in the Ionic Room of the Grand Lodge’s new Masonic Temple at 23rd Street and Sixth Avenue in 1875.
Those later addresses are not pinned on this map. Grand Street represents one documented meeting place in the Manhattan branch, not the whole of that branch’s movements.
City Lodge reaches Queens through its 1973 consolidation with Service.
Across the East River, Island City Lodge No. 586, chartered June 18, 1866, first met at Hunters Point in what is now Long Island City.
Its temple went up on Jackson Avenue, between Pearson and Anable Streets, on the block of the old City Hall.
The cornerstone was laid on September 8, 1906, and the dedication followed on May 10, 1907.
The federal courthouse nearby began renting the ground floor in 1934 and the whole building in 1938. The lodge moved to Mizpah’s temple in Elmhurst.
The Island City temple survived and later returned to commercial use.
Elmhurst, Where the Branches Met
The Elmhurst pin marks a building that became a meeting place for several branches.
Mizpah Lodge began in 1873 in old Newtown, in the law office of its first Master, Garret J. Garretson, and then on the top floor of the Jebens Building on Broadway.
In 1905 it moved into Arcanum Hall on the same street.
It bought a site in 1916 for $6,000, laid the cornerstone on January 1, 1920, and dedicated the temple on March 17, 1921.
The newspapers of 1919 and 1920 put it at Warner Avenue and Ketchum Place. Warner Avenue became Whitney Avenue, and the building is 87-11 Whitney Avenue.
The Mizpah Masonic Temple matters on this map because of who else came.
Island City began meeting there in 1938. Geba moved in during its early years. By the late 1970s Service City met there too.
The Masonic School of Instruction, where officers of the district’s lodges learned their ritual work, began there in 1928. Writing in 1973, Mizpah’s centennial history reported that the school had been held there since its beginning.
In 1946 four lodges, Anchor, Geba, King David, and Service, held a joint communication in the hall.
The lodge’s own history says the temple became the center of the district’s Masonic activity. Its rooms served more than the lodge that built it.
Christian Testimony Church is listed at the same address. According to the lodge, the word MIZPAH remains above the door.
Flushing’s Borrowed Temple
Service Lodge No. 1009 was chartered on May 3, 1923, and met at the Flushing Temple, 137-70 Northern Boulevard near Union Avenue.
Cornucopia Lodge No. 563 built and ran that temple. Service’s pin therefore marks a meeting place in another lodge’s building.
A 1936 notice has the First Queens District’s deputy visiting Service there. A 1956 invitation to a district deputy’s homecoming gives the same address.
The district’s 1936 charity ball was held elsewhere, at the Flushing Armory.
Service had no temple of its own in the sources in hand.
Its number survived the 1973 consolidation with City Lodge and the 1982 consolidation with Geba. Its Flushing address did not.
By the late 1970s, as Service City, the lodge was meeting at Mizpah’s temple in Elmhurst.
The Flushing pin follows a branch of the membership, not a building that passed into the combined lodge’s ownership.
Astoria, the Shared Address
Advance Lodge was chartered on July 2, 1867, as Astoria’s first lodge.
It spent its first half century in rooms it did not own: Odd Fellows’ Hall at 104 Main Street, then Mechanics Hall at 93 Fulton Avenue, then 165 Fulton Avenue from 1876.
That last address was above a tavern, at a corner now identified as Main Street and Astoria Boulevard.
Those earlier rooms are not pinned on the map.
The temple came later. The cornerstone was laid on November 20, 1915, on a lot on Grand Avenue near Crescent Street and Van Alst Avenue.
Some 800 Masons marched from the old rooms to the site for the ceremony.
The building opened in April 1916 with a week of fairs. Its architects were Wenige and Nelson, and it has three stories.
Today the Advance Masonic Temple is 21-14 30th Avenue.
Island City Mizpah joined Advance there in 1993. Service City Geba joined the combined lodge in 2018 to form Advance Service Mizpah Lodge No. 586.
The Merger History explains the sequence. The Timeline places it alongside the charters, cornerstones, and dedications.
The map selects five sites from a longer history of rented rooms and shared halls. Its final pin marks a building still serving the purpose for which Advance built it: a place for a lodge to meet.
Sources and Notes
This article draws on the lodge, temple, cornerstone, and geography pages in the series. Their source lists identify the underlying records used for each branch.
Series Articles
The Advance, Mizpah, Island City, City, and Service lodge pages.
The temple and cornerstone pages linked in the body.
From Manhattan to Astoria: The Geography of a Lodge Lineage.
Lodge History
Mizpah Lodge centennial history, 1973.
Newspapers
Brooklyn Daily Times, December 31, 1919.
Brooklyn Daily Times, October 25, 1920.
Brooklyn Eagle, November 21, 1915.
Brooklyn Daily Times, April 21 and 25, 1916.
Times Union, November 22, 1936.
[Before publication: complete the bibliographic details, identify the underlying records for the Island City temple dates, and confirm present-use descriptions.]
Note 1: Places, Addresses, Dates, and the Drawing
The schematic map shows selected sites and documented movements. It is not a complete inventory of the lodges’ meeting places and does not show distance or scale.
The original draft references an embedded map as node/49717d3f-5266. That reference is not a public map URL or usable embed code. The actual map must be inserted separately before publication.
City Lodge’s hall is given as the corner of Grand and Centre Streets in the notices and as 165–171 Grand Street in the lodge’s records. Its first meeting place was Florence Hall. The Grand Street site should not be labeled as occupied “from 1856” unless a source establishes when the lodge moved there.
The Island City site is given as near Anable Avenue in some notes and between Pearson and Anable Streets in others. The map should use a verified location rather than an inferred modern street number.
Grand Avenue is now 30th Avenue, and Warner Avenue is now Whitney Avenue.
A 1946 program misprints the Mizpah Temple’s address as 37-11 Whitney Avenue. The address used in this series is 87-11 Whitney Avenue.
The statement that the Masonic School of Instruction had met at Mizpah since 1928 comes from the centennial history’s account in 1973. It does not establish that the school continues to meet there today.
Advance’s cornerstone was laid in November 1915. April 1916 was the week of fairs that opened the building.
The present uses of the Odd Fellows’ Hall site and the Flushing Temple are not established in the sources in hand. This page therefore does not claim that Advance’s is the only surviving lodge building among all five selected sites.
The former Island City temple’s commercial use and the church listing at Mizpah’s address require confirmation before publication if described as current.
The consolidations of 1973, 1982, 1987, and 1993 are given by year because their months are not reliably established in the working record.
Start Here · Series Hub · Timeline · Previous Article: To Be Assigned · Next Article: To Be Assigned · Related Directory: To Be Assigned · Related Member Profiles: To Be Assigned
Related Reading
From Manhattan to Astoria: The Geography of a Lodge Lineage
The Lodge Family Tree of Advance Service Mizpah Lodge No. 586
The Advance Masonic Temple in Astoria: A Lodge Building That Endured
Mizpah Masonic Temple: The Watchtower at the Center of Queens
The Island City Masonic Temple: A Building That Served a Growing Borough
How This Series Is Researched: Sources for Queens Lodge History
