By Brete Murphy · November 10, 2026
A College Point lodge, an Astoria offshoot and four institutions from Richmond Hill, Liberty Avenue and the Brooklyn border came together in Anchor-Astoria Lodge No. 729. Their histories trace a borough-wide network whose surviving branches now meet in College Point.
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The temple at 18-14 College Point Boulevard is a meeting place for histories that began well beyond its neighborhood.
Anchor-Astoria Lodge No. 729 brings together six constituent lodge histories.
Anchor began in College Point. Astoria organized across the borough in the community whose name it took.
Richmond Hill, Cathedral and Wakefield belonged to the southern part of Queens. Granite emerged from Tadmor’s membership on the Ridgewood-Glendale side of the Brooklyn border.
Their beginnings describe several different settings in which people organized a lodge.
Their consolidations describe how those institutions eventually came together.
The distinction matters. A consolidation date establishes an institutional change. It does not necessarily establish a move, the sale of a building or the reasons members made their decision.
Read with those limits, Anchor-Astoria’s lineage becomes a cross-section of Queens rather than simply a list of predecessor names.
Anchor: The College Point Beginning
Anchor’s own history places its beginnings in the College Point associated with Conrad Poppenhusen’s industrial and civic enterprises.
The lodge worked under dispensation in November 1872 and received its charter in May 1873. Its history describes a June ceremony and an initial membership of twenty-three.
The precise terminology for those stages should follow the controlling Grand Lodge records.
The lodge’s tradition places its first meetings in the Poppenhusen Institute.
That account connects Anchor with an institution central to College Point’s civic history. It should remain identified as the lodge’s account until contemporary meeting notices or other records establish the occupancy independently.[1]
The early story was not one of uninterrupted strength.
Anchor’s history credits visitors from Cornucopia Lodge in Flushing with helping sustain its work during difficult years.
That relationship is more revealing than a simple picture of a self-contained village lodge.
Anchor had its own identity, but its continued work depended in part on people arriving from another community.
The institutional boundary did not prevent practical cooperation.
Read The Tuesday Night Visitors: Cornucopia and Anchor →
Astoria: A New Lodge in an Established Temple
Astoria’s beginning came almost half a century later.
The supplied history describes thirteen Masons organizing a new lodge in 1918. Its early work took place in Advance’s temple, with an opening in June 1919 and constitution in 1920.
The relationship with Advance is central to the story.
It should not, however, be converted into an unqualified claim that every founder belonged to Advance unless the founding roster establishes that affiliation.
The new lodge began with access to a building another institution had already constructed.
Its later meeting places included Castle Hall on 31st Avenue.
The lodge’s retrospective history reports that sixty-five members served during the Second World War. That figure belongs to the history’s account rather than an independently reconstructed service roll.
In 1985, Astoria consolidated with Anchor.
The same history gives the respective memberships as 123 and 265. These are useful reported figures for that union, although they do not establish a borough-wide pattern of membership change.[1]
Read The Thirteen Who Left Advance →
Richmond Hill: An Institution Acquires a Home
Richmond Hill Lodge No. 892 began in 1911.
The author’s research describes approximately fifty founders and places its constitution in May 1912 at Arcanum Hall, the night after Hillside’s constitution.
Within several years, Richmond Hill had obtained a temple of its own.
That sequence distinguishes its beginning from Astoria’s.
Astoria used Advance’s established temple. Richmond Hill moved toward premises associated with its own institutional identity.
The building later became part of a wider network when Wakefield met there.
Those successive uses should be followed separately from the consolidation dates.
A lodge occupying another lodge’s temple had not necessarily joined it.
Richmond Hill and Wakefield shared an address before they shared an institutional name.[2]
Granite: Tadmor’s Offshoot
Granite Lodge No. 1011 formed in 1922 with members from Tadmor.
Its early meeting place was Tadmor’s first building.
That beginning connects the Anchor-Astoria line with Ridgewood and Glendale, but it does not make Tadmor itself an absorbed predecessor.
Tadmor continued independently.
Granite became a separate institution whose later consolidations led elsewhere.
The relationship is best understood through people and premises: members helped establish another lodge, and an existing building accommodated its work.
Granite’s later history belongs within Anchor-Astoria’s lineage. Tadmor’s own charter does not.[2]
Read One Charter, Many Rooms: Tadmor’s Lineage Essay →
Cathedral: The Liberty Avenue Connection
Cathedral Lodge No. 1031 was chartered in 1924, according to the author’s compilation.
Its meeting-place history includes the Civic Theatre Building at 113-10 Liberty Avenue.
That address adds another kind of setting to the lineage.
A lodge room within a larger building was not the same undertaking as constructing and operating a dedicated temple.
The distinction matters when comparing the constituent lodges.
They did not all begin with the same property obligations, nor did they necessarily face the same circumstances when they later consolidated.
Cathedral’s room also served another purpose in the lineage: it hosted Wakefield’s institution.
An established lodge’s premises again provided space for a new institution before that institution had a settled home of its own.[2][3]
Wakefield: A Lodge Formed Through Several Rooms
Wakefield’s tenth-anniversary history describes eleven Masons from nine lodges meeting in 1929 to organize a lodge for the South Ozone Park area associated with the old Wakefield Farms.
Their earlier affiliations included lodges in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Connecticut.
That variety establishes the founders’ institutional connections.
It does not, by itself, establish why each moved to the neighborhood or whether each was buying a new house.
Wakefield’s early ceremonies and meeting places crossed several lodge histories.
It was instituted in Cathedral’s room in 1930.
Its constitution took place in Tadmor’s lodge room in 1931.
For part of its early history, it used a church space that had to be prepared for lodge work.
By 1936, it was meeting in Richmond Hill’s temple.[3]
The sequence is a reminder that a lodge’s beginning could depend on several hosts.
Cathedral provided one ceremonial setting, Tadmor another, and Richmond Hill a later meeting place.
Those relationships preceded the formal consolidations.
Two Streams of Consolidation
The constituent histories eventually gathered in two principal branches.
The author’s compilation gives the following sequence:
| Date | Institutional change |
|---|---|
| 1976 | Granite and Cathedral combined as Cathedral-Granite |
| January 1, 1978 | Richmond Hill and Wakefield combined as Richmond Hill-Wakefield |
| December 1, 1985 | Anchor and Astoria combined as Anchor-Astoria |
| December 4, 1986 | The Cathedral-Granite and Richmond Hill-Wakefield branches combined as Queensboro Lodge No. 892 |
| April 13, 2024 | Queensboro consolidated with Anchor-Astoria |
The formal wording and effective dates should follow the controlling Grand Lodge records when reproducing the complete merger history.[4]
One branch joined College Point’s Anchor with Astoria.
The other assembled Granite, Cathedral, Richmond Hill and Wakefield as Queensboro.
The branches came together in 2024.
That chronology establishes the institutional sequence.
The precise meeting-place history is less complete.
When Anchor began using 18-14 College Point Boulevard, where Queensboro met during each stage of its existence and when the two bodies first shared premises remain questions for further research.
The final consolidation should not be used as a substitute for those missing occupancy dates.
A Brooklyn Lodge That Does Not Belong Here
An earlier draft included Ridgewood Lodge No. 710 of Brooklyn.
That inclusion was incorrect.
The draft followed wording in a 2014 Landmarks Preservation Commission release that associated Ridgewood with an Astoria lodge in College Point.
The author’s subsequent Grand Lodge research identifies a different consolidation history involving Cypress Hill and Star of Hope.
Ridgewood No. 710 is therefore excluded from this lineage.[5]
The correction also clarifies the count.
The six constituent lodge histories examined here are:
- Anchor.
- Astoria.
- Richmond Hill.
- Granite.
- Cathedral.
- Wakefield.
Ridgewood is a neighborhood connection through Granite and Tadmor, not an additional lodge in this institutional line.
What the Geography Shows—and What It Does Not
The beginnings are geographically broad.
They include College Point, Astoria, Richmond Hill, Liberty Avenue, South Ozone Park and the Ridgewood-Glendale area.
The present meeting place brings those histories together in College Point.
That is a documented institutional gathering, not evidence that all the members or their families moved north.
Nor does the sequence alone establish why the lodges consolidated.
Membership change, residential movement, property costs and the availability of meeting space are subjects to investigate in minutes, returns and accounts.
They should not be assigned as identical causes in every case.
The strongest conclusion is more precise.
Institutions founded for different communities eventually continued through a shared lodge, while their earlier identities remained part of its history.
A Host Building Beyond One Lineage
The College Point temple now serves more than Anchor-Astoria.
The author’s November 2026 account also identifies Cornucopia, Harmony and Francis Lewis as meeting there.
Four of the seven current Queens District lodges therefore share the building under that account.[6]
Shared occupancy is not another consolidation.
Each lodge retains its own institutional identity.
That distinction returns the story to Anchor’s early relationship with Cornucopia.
The forms of cooperation have changed, but access to other lodges’ people and premises remains part of the district’s history.
Anchor-Astoria’s lineage records the institutions that combined.
Its building also accommodates institutions that have not.
Endnotes
1. Anchor and Astoria
Anchor-Astoria Lodge No. 729, “History,” approximately 1998, as supplied through the author’s research.
Supports the accounts of Anchor’s beginnings, the Poppenhusen Institute tradition, Cornucopia’s assistance, Astoria’s organization and the reported membership figures at the 1985 consolidation.
The Poppenhusen meeting-place account remains attributed to lodge tradition.
See also:
2. Richmond Hill, Granite and Cathedral
The author’s Anchor-Astoria research:
- Article 3, concerning the Richmond Hill temple.
- Article 4, concerning Richmond Hill, Granite, Cathedral and Queensboro.
- Queens Masonic District historical material cited within that research.
Supports the institutional beginnings, meeting-place references and relationships summarized here.
Direct article and clipping URLs were not supplied with this manuscript.
3. Wakefield Lodge
Wakefield Lodge No. 1110, tenth-anniversary book, 1940.
Supports the organizing group, earlier lodge affiliations, institution and constitution venues, temporary meeting arrangements and later Richmond Hill occupancy.
The founders’ affiliations are not treated as proof of residential motives or homeownership.
4. Consolidation Chronology
Brete Murphy’s Grand Lodge compilation, November 2026, for the 1978 and 1986 consolidations and the other dates reproduced in the author’s lineage research.
The supplied research packet supports the 2024 consolidation.
The table summarizes institutional changes. It does not establish property transfers or the dates of moves.
5. Ridgewood Lodge No. 710: Correction
The author’s November 2026 correction, based on Grand Lodge records, supersedes the earlier inclusion drawn from a 2014 New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission press release.
Ridgewood No. 710 is not included among Anchor-Astoria’s constituent lodges.
Its separate history should not be confused with Granite’s origins among Tadmor members in the Ridgewood-Glendale area.
6. Present Meeting Place
Brete Murphy, November 2026 confirmation.
Supplies the present College Point meeting place and the shared occupancy by Anchor-Astoria, Cornucopia, Harmony and Francis Lewis.
The date when Anchor first occupied the property and its original ownership and construction history remain unresolved here.
Questions for Further Research
- When did Anchor begin meeting at 18-14 College Point Boulevard?
- Did Anchor construct the building or acquire an existing property?
- Where did Anchor-Astoria meet after the 1985 consolidation?
- Where did Queensboro meet after its formation in 1986?
- When did Queensboro and Anchor-Astoria first share premises?
- What happened to Richmond Hill’s temple?
- When did Cathedral stop using the Liberty Avenue room?
- What do membership returns show at each consolidation?
- What reasons do the minutes and consolidation resolutions record?
Continue Through the Anchor-Astoria Series
- Anchor-Astoria Lodge No. 729: Main History
- The Thirteen Who Left Advance: Astoria’s Beginning
- The Tuesday Night Visitors: Cornucopia and Anchor
Follow the Connections
- Tadmor: One Charter, Many Rooms
- Advance Service Mizpah: Six Lodge Histories
- Cornucopia Lodge No. 563
- Connecting Stories Across the Queens District’s Seven Lodges
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