Where the Lines Meet: Four Queens Lodges at the College Point Temple

By Brete Murphy · November 11, 2026

Anchor-Astoria, Cornucopia, Harmony and Francis Lewis now share a meeting place at 18-14 College Point Boulevard. Their seventeen constituent lodge histories connect Manhattan, Flushing, Astoria, southern Queens and the north shore—and bring earlier episodes of assistance into view.

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The address is 18-14 College Point Boulevard.

The photograph used in the author’s building research shows commercial premises at street level, a separate entrance marked for the Anchor-Astoria Masonic Temple and Masonic lettering above.

It records an exterior, not the interior arrangement or a particular meeting night.[1]

The present institutional picture comes from another source: the author’s November 2026 account.

Four of the seven lodges in the Queens District now meet here.

They are Anchor-Astoria No. 729, Cornucopia No. 563, Harmony No. 241 and Francis Lewis No. 273.

Together, they preserve seventeen of the thirty-three constituent lodge histories counted in this series.[2]

That is more than half the set.

It is not a count of all Masonic institutions in Queens, nor does it mean seventeen separate active warrants operate inside the building.

It describes how much of this particular institutional history now shares one address.

Four Lodges, Different Roads

Present lodge Constituent histories Earliest constituent beginning Connection with the present address
Anchor-Astoria No. 729 6 Anchor, College Point, 1873 The host; its first occupancy date remains unresolved
Harmony No. 241 6 Oscar Coles, later Constitution, Manhattan, 1851 Began meeting here in September 2024 under the author’s account
Francis Lewis No. 273 4 Metropolitan, Manhattan, 1852 Began meeting here in September 2025 under the author’s account
Cornucopia No. 563 1 Cornucopia, Flushing, 1865 Began meeting here in September 2024 under the author’s account
Total 17

The distinctions matter.

Anchor’s College Point origin does not establish when it first used this particular property.

A consolidation into Anchor-Astoria does not automatically establish when the incoming body began meeting here.

For Cornucopia, Harmony and Francis Lewis, the supplied recent account provides arrival dates.

For the building’s earlier occupants, the chronology remains less complete.

The Host’s College Point Beginning

Anchor began working under dispensation in November 1872.

Its charter followed in May 1873.

The lodge’s history places an early ceremony in June and gives an initial membership of twenty-three.

Its tradition associates the first meetings with Conrad Poppenhusen’s Institute.[3]

That account belongs to Anchor’s beginnings in College Point.

It should not be mistaken for a history of the present temple.

Who constructed 18-14 College Point Boulevard, when it was built and when Anchor first occupied it remain open questions.

A real-estate database gives 1929 as a construction date.

That figure needs corroboration from building or property records before it becomes an established date in the narrative.[1]

The institution is older than the possible building date.

The relationship between the two still needs to be reconstructed.

Six Histories Within Anchor-Astoria

Anchor’s later institutional history gathered other communities into the College Point line.

Astoria joined Anchor in December 1985.

Astoria’s beginnings had involved Advance’s temple and a separate organizing group in 1918–1919.

The combined institution became Anchor-Astoria.

Queensboro joined in April 2024.

Its constituent histories included Richmond Hill, Wakefield, Cathedral and Granite.[2]

Those consolidations account for the host lodge’s six constituent histories.

They do not mean six separate charters now conduct independent work in the building.

They also do not establish that all the predecessor lodges occupied this address before consolidation.

The merger tree and the occupancy history are related records, not interchangeable ones.

Read Anchor-Astoria: Across Queens to College Point →

Read The Thirteen Who Left Advance: Astoria’s Beginning →

Cornucopia: The Guest That Once Helped the Host

Cornucopia’s arrival supplies the strongest historical parallel in the building.

Anchor’s Golden Jubilee account remembered difficult early years and credited visitors from Cornucopia with helping sustain the lodge’s work.

The supplied account names Rasquin, Kirkman and Lewry as men who came to College Point on Tuesday nights.

Their full names and the precise years still require checking against rosters and contemporary records.[4]

Cornucopia’s 1940 program also identified former members among the founders or leaders of Anchor, Whitestone, Bayside and Paumanok.

That wording should remain “founders or leaders.”

It does not establish an identical founding relationship with each institution.

Cornucopia later lost its own premises through sale.

Its history attributes the 1990 sale of the Northern Boulevard temple to high real estate taxes. That is the lodge’s explanation, not a finding that the property was sold through tax foreclosure.

The former temple was demolished in 2018.[5]

Cornucopia subsequently used the Whitestone temple, although the complete sequence after 1990 remains unresolved.

Under the author’s account, its Whitestone arrangement ended in June 2024, and it began meeting in College Point that September.

The earlier visitors and the present hospitality belong in the same story.

They do not establish a formal repayment.

They show cooperation recurring between institutions whose identities remained separate.

Read The Tuesday Night Visitors: Cornucopia and Anchor →

Read Cornucopia: One Charter, Many Connections →

Harmony: Another Arrival From Whitestone

Harmony arrived in September 2024 under the same account.

Its earlier constituent histories include several documented uses of premises associated with other institutions.

King David began in Advance’s temple and later used Castle Hall.

Maspeth and Rufus King were constituted in Tadmor’s Ridgewood temple.

Rufus King used Jamaica’s former chapel.

These references establish particular relationships with rooms and buildings.

They do not yet prove that every constituent always rented or borrowed its premises.

The property research remains incomplete.[6]

Harmony’s present name dates from November 21, 1990.

That formation combined three bodies:

  • Maspeth-Constitution No. 241.
  • Cardozo-Rufus-King-David No. 994.
  • North Shore No. 1149.

The resulting lodge retained No. 241, associated with the institution founded as Oscar Coles Lodge in Manhattan in 1851.[6]

College Point is the latest documented setting in that history.

Its shared address with the other lodges does not constitute another consolidation.

Read Harmony: A Manhattan Number, Six Lodge Histories →

Read One Hall in Ridgewood →

Francis Lewis: The September 2025 Arrival

The author’s newly supplied account dates Francis Lewis’s arrival in College Point to September 2025.

That establishes a more precise recent endpoint than the earlier lineage essay could provide.[9]

Francis Lewis brings together Metropolitan, Whitestone, Bayside and Brandeis.

Metropolitan’s number, 273, dates from 1852.

Atwood belongs to Metropolitan’s origin story but is not counted as another absorbed constituent.

Whitestone supplies a separate connection with the host.

The historian’s research notes identify Henry C. Buncke, a Past Master of Anchor, as assisting Whitestone Lodge during its early development in 1922.

That account remains attributed to the research notes until contemporary minutes or newspaper coverage can corroborate the details.[7]

The later arrangement places Whitestone’s institutional continuation in a building associated with Anchor.

It is a meaningful parallel.

It does not establish that Buncke’s assistance caused, anticipated or obligated the 2025 move.

Read Francis Lewis: The Number That Traveled East →

Four Identities Under One Roof

The building’s present significance lies in accommodation rather than another merger.

Anchor-Astoria remains Anchor-Astoria.

Cornucopia remains independent.

Harmony retains its own institution.

Francis Lewis retains its name and number.

The shared address creates opportunities for contact, but the supplied material does not document their present financial arrangements, room assignments or joint activities.

Those should not be invented from the fact of occupancy.

What can be stated is substantial enough.

Four lodges, containing seventeen constituent histories, use one meeting place.

The consolidation charts explain what combined within each lodge.

The address explains how separate lodges can continue alongside one another.

The Other Queens Door

The seven-lodge set also has another shared Queens meeting place.

Advance Service Mizpah and Tadmor meet in the Advance Masonic Temple at 21-14 30th Avenue in Astoria.

Springfield Gardens meets at Scottish Rite premises in Rockville Centre, while remaining within the Queens District account used in this series.[2]

The distribution is therefore:

  • Four lodges in College Point.
  • Two in Astoria.
  • One in Rockville Centre.

Six of the seven meet in two Queens buildings.

It would be inaccurate to say that every story ends at one of those two doors.

Springfield Gardens supplies the geographical exception.

Nor does the survival of the two Queens meeting places establish why they remained viable.

Commercial premises, rental income, ownership and maintenance are subjects for property and financial records, not conclusions to be drawn from the façades alone.

Read Advance Service Mizpah’s Lineage Essay →

Read Tadmor: One Charter, Many Rooms →

Read Springfield Gardens: Nine Lodge Histories →

Where the Connecting Stories End

The connecting stories have followed several kinds of relationship.

A firm supplied a room plan used elsewhere.

Members helped organize new institutions.

Visitors supported another lodge’s work.

Officers performed duties across district lines.

A large temple hosted ceremonies for lodges that later entered different surviving bodies.

College Point brings those themes into a present arrangement.

It does not erase the differences among the lodges.

It gives several separate institutions access to the same building.

The old connections are visible without turning them into debts.

Cornucopia once helped Anchor.

An Anchor Past Master is credited with assisting Whitestone.

Maspeth and Rufus King used Tadmor’s room before their histories entered Harmony.

Their later continuations now meet here.

The address does not explain every decision that brought them.

It provides a place from which to see the relationships together.

Four lodges remain distinct.

Seventeen constituent histories share one door.


Endnotes

1. The Building and Exterior

The author’s Anchor-Astoria building article.

Undated Flickr photograph titled “Anchor-Astoria Masonic Temple.”

StreetEasy listing for 18-14 College Point Boulevard.

The photograph supports a description of the pictured exterior, not a verified November 2026 storefront inventory.

The database’s 1929 construction date remains uncorroborated here.

2. Counts, Consolidations and Present Meeting Places

The seven revised lineage essays, the series capstone and Grand Lodge of New York records as compiled by Brete Murphy.

The four College Point lodges contain:

6 + 1 + 6 + 4 = 17 constituent histories.

The full seven-lodge set contains 33.

Atwood is treated as an antecedent to Metropolitan, not an additional absorbed constituent.

The present distribution follows the author’s November 2026 account.

3. Anchor’s Beginnings

Anchor-Astoria Lodge No. 729, “History,” as cited in the author’s research.

The Poppenhusen Institute connection remains attributed to lodge tradition.

The founding history does not establish first occupancy of 18-14 College Point Boulevard.

4. Cornucopia and Anchor

Anchor Lodge Golden Jubilee booklet, as quoted in the later Anchor-Astoria history.

Cornucopia Lodge, 1940 anniversary program, page 19.

See The Tuesday Night Visitors.

Full names and dates for Rasquin, Kirkman and Lewry remain research questions.

The anniversary program’s wording is “founders or leaders.”

5. Cornucopia’s Building and Recent Move

The author’s Cornucopia article and underlying sources.

“Requiem For The Razed Flushing Cornucopia Masonic Temple,” Flushing.com, March 18, 2019.

Brete Murphy, November 2026 confirmation of the June and September 2024 arrangements.

The explanation of the 1990 sale is attributed to the lodge.

The complete post-1990 meeting-place chronology remains unresolved.

6. Harmony

The author’s Harmony main feature, lineage sidebar and Grand Lodge compilation.

Supports the constituent histories and the November 21, 1990 three-body formation.

North Shore is included alongside Maspeth-Constitution and Cardozo-Rufus-King-David.

The evidence of shared premises is not treated as proof that no constituent ever owned property.

7. Henry C. Buncke and Whitestone

Research notes of the Advance Service Mizpah historian, as used in the author’s November 2026 Buncke feature.

The assistance account remains attributed to that research.

Contemporary corroboration is still needed.

8. Consolidation and Occupancy

The author’s Grand Lodge compilation supports the institutional changes summarized here.

A consolidation date is not automatically a move date.

The article distinguishes incoming constituent histories from separate active charters and current building occupants.

9. Francis Lewis’s Arrival

Brete Murphy, November 2026 account.

Dates the beginning of Francis Lewis’s College Point meetings to September 2025.

This supplements the earlier lineage essay, in which the arrival year remained unresolved.

10. Scope of the Closing Story

The article concerns four of the seven lodges in the Queens District account used for this series.

It does not claim to inventory all Masonic activity in Queens.

Historical assistance is not described as a documented financial obligation or formal repayment.

No interior arrangement or specific current meeting night is reconstructed.

Direct photograph and clipping URLs were not supplied with the manuscript.


Questions for Further Research

  • Who constructed 18-14 College Point Boulevard?
  • What do building records establish about its date and original use?
  • When did Anchor first occupy it?
  • When did the lodge acquire its ownership interest?
  • When did Cornucopia and Harmony each begin meeting at Whitestone?
  • What records document their 2024 moves?
  • What contemporary source corroborates Buncke’s assistance to Whitestone?
  • What are the full names and service dates of Rasquin, Kirkman and Lewry?
  • What records document Francis Lewis’s September 2025 arrival?

Follow the Four College Point Lineages

Return to the Connecting Stories


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Brete Murphy

A Freemason, a local historian, well versed in symbolism, comparative religious studies, esoterica, and a member of several societies. I am currently the Historian of Advance Service Mizpah Lodge 586 in Astoria , New York.

https://www.bretemurphy.com/
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