Queens History and Freemasonry / Springfield Gardens Series / Dunton Masonic Temple
Part of the Springfield Gardens Lodge series · A building history for Freemason Buildings of Queens
Main Feature: Nine Lodges, One Living History · Series Overview · Masonic Buildings
In 1921, a Masonic club not yet a year old laid the cornerstone of a proposed $50,000 community hall. Its members planned to build in stages, using bazaars to help pay for the work. Dunton Lodge’s charter followed in 1923.
November 10, 2026 · By Brete Murphy
A Village with a Railroad Name
Dunton was never large.
According to a local-history account preserved from the Queens Borough Public Library, Frederick W. Dunton laid out the community in the 1880s.
He was a nephew of Long Island Rail Road president Austin Corbin.
The account describes an area extending from Atlantic Avenue to Jerome Avenue and from Van Wyck Boulevard toward 126th Street, on the eastern side of what became Richmond Hill.
Dunton had a railroad station, a Presbyterian church and a name whose boundaries were not consistently observed in later notices.
The same Masonic address could appear as Dunton, Richmond Hill or Jamaica.
For part of the twentieth century, the neighborhood also had a Masonic temple.
It stood at Van Wyck and Jerome avenues and was later identified as 97-15 Van Wyck Boulevard.
The order of its making is unusual.
A club came first. Its building campaign followed. The chartered lodge came afterward.
Dunton’s later institutional line entered Springfield Gardens Lodge No. 1057.
That larger history appears in Springfield Gardens Lodge No. 1057: Nine Lodges, One Living History.
Fifty-Nine Lodges, One Club
In October 1921, the Brooklyn Daily Times reported that the Dunton Masonic Club was less than a year old.
It already had 125 members, drawn from fifty-nine lodges.
Those figures describe the club’s reported membership and affiliations at that moment. They are not a count of Dunton Lodge members, because the lodge had not yet received its charter.
The club brought together men whose Masonic affiliations had begun elsewhere.
Its officers included F. B. Harrington as president and John H. Foote as treasurer.
Vice president Samuel Sanders chaired the building committee.
The organization was already undertaking a substantial project.
A Community Hall in Stages
On Saturday afternoon, October 22, 1921, Grand Master Robert H. Robinson came to lay the cornerstone of the club’s new building on Van Wyck Avenue.
The next day’s newspaper report described the participation of about thirty Grand Lodge officers.
Former District Deputy Thomas J. Towers delivered the oration.
The band of the Ottilie Orphan Home played, and Masons attended from lodges and clubs elsewhere in Queens.
The proposed building was intended to serve “as a centre of community activity, as well as a club house by the Masons.”
That wording matters.
The club was not describing a meeting room reserved entirely for ritual work. It was proposing a hall with a wider neighborhood purpose.
Just Above the First Tier of Beams
The reported estimate was about $50,000.
That was a projected cost, not an audited final expenditure.
Construction was to proceed only “just above the first tier of beams” until additional money became available.
Even with that limitation, the club intended to finish a main hall in time for a Masonic fair that December.
The proposed auditorium was approximately 100 feet deep and 45 feet wide.
The report describes a staged construction plan. It does not establish the building’s final height, completed floor arrangement or the dates on which every part was finished.
The temple began as a project that would have to earn its way forward.
Built by the Bazaar
Two years later, the building fund still needed support.
In October 1923, the club advertised its annual bazaar at the clubhouse on Van Wyck Avenue near Jerome.
The stated purpose was to build a fund “sufficiently large to complete the work of construction on the new and modern clubhouse.”
The language suggests that construction remained incomplete in some respect.
It does not identify precisely which spaces or finishes were outstanding.
The bazaar ran for a week.
A Manhattan caterer provided dinners each evening from six to eight, with special prices for children.
Nightly prizes included a radio offered through a share-based drawing.
Neighborhood businesses purchased space in a souvenir journal.
Different evenings were assigned to Shriners, Knights Templar, Royal Arch Masons and district blue lodges.
The work involved three organizations:
- Dunton Lodge No. 1017.
- The Ladies’ Auxiliary.
- Dunton Chapter, Order of the Eastern Star.
By then, the lodge existed.
The club’s building project had acquired a chartered Masonic institution among its users and supporters.
The Lodge Moves into the Story
The Grand Lodge chartered Dunton Lodge No. 1017 on May 3, 1923, according to the author’s compilation of Grand Lodge records.
A district visitation schedule published in January 1925 placed it at the Masonic Hall on Van Wyck Avenue near Jerome.
That June, it held its fortieth stated communication at the temple and conferred the Master Mason degree.
The references establish that the lodge was using the hall built through the club’s campaign.
They do not establish the legal relationship between club and lodge, the ownership of the property or the terms under which the lodge occupied it.
Those questions require organizational and property records.
Incorporation in 1927
In September 1927, the Brooklyn Eagle reported that Dunton Lodge had filed articles of incorporation in Albany.
It named Oliver E. Miles, George F. Wade and August Williams as trustees.
Incorporation should not be confused with the lodge’s 1923 charter or assumed to prove ownership of the temple.
A separate property record would be needed for that conclusion.
An August Williams died the following summer at a Van Wyck Boulevard address near the temple.
He may have been the trustee named in 1927. The shared name and proximity are suggestive, not conclusive identification.
The Hall at Van Wyck and Jerome
Through the 1930s, the temple served as Dunton’s setting for installations, degree work and official visits.
In January 1934, Alfred O. Ruben became Master there.
He managed the collection department of the Brooklyn Trust Company.
Forty-five fellow Masons from the bank reportedly attended and presented him with a bronze gavel.
In July 1935, Ruben received a Grand Lodge commission at the temple before an audience reported at more than 200 Masons.
Municipal Judge Edward J. Smith presented the commission.
Roger Kipp of Springfield Gardens presented the jewel.
The ceremony connected Dunton’s local hall with professional and Masonic relationships extending beyond the immediate neighborhood.
Smith also connects this history with Tadmor’s beginnings and the wider Queens district.
Read Tadmor Lodge No. 923: A Monument in the Making of Ridgewood.
Food, Games and Public Events
The hall’s calendar included Fellowcraft Club parties and barn dances.
In May 1936, the lodge advertised a three-night bazaar and country store.
Another notice announced a lecture by a speaker billed as Chief Running Bear on “The American Indian and Americanism.”
The billing establishes how the event was advertised. It does not independently establish the speaker’s identity, background or authority.
Such notices show a building used for entertainment and social gatherings as well as formal lodge meetings.
They support the club’s original ambition to create a center of activity, without proving that the hall served every part of the neighborhood equally.
People Connected with Dunton
Members’ notices place the lodge within local working and professional lives.
Charles Maas was a retired police sergeant who operated a private detective agency in Jamaica.
His obituary recalled police commendations, including a rescue from a burning Manhattan tenement.
Henry Wade was associated with Jamaica’s volunteer fire service and the Odd Fellows.
His 1933 funeral was held at Dunton Presbyterian Church.
These examples give the membership texture. They are not a complete social profile of the lodge.
A Funeral Beyond the Membership
In October 1939, Dunton’s Master conducted Masonic rites for Robert G. Elliott, whose own lodge was in Plattsburgh.
Elliott was a Richmond Hill electrical contractor and New York State’s official executioner.
The reference belongs to the history of Dunton’s fraternal work.
It should not be treated as proof that Elliott belonged to Dunton or that the funeral took place inside its temple.
The distinction is important in a building article: an event involving the lodge is not automatically an event in its hall.
An Anniversary with an Exact Address
On May 14, 1938, Dunton Lodge held its fifteenth-anniversary dinner at the Dunton Masonic Temple.
The newspaper gave the address as 97-15 Van Wyck Boulevard.
That reference connects the institution, building name and numbered address.
It is the latest unambiguous temple event identified in the clippings assembled here.
It is not evidence that the building closed in 1938.
The record becomes incomplete after that point.
After the Expressway
Later death notices begin placing Dunton Lodge elsewhere.
A 1959 notice describes it as being “in Hillside.”
Notices from 1964 onward associate it with Woodhaven.
Those descriptions suggest a change in geographic association.
They do not establish an exact meeting address or prove a move into Hillside’s temple on 96th Street.
That remains a plausible research question, not a documented tenancy.
For the nearby building history, read The Hillside Temple in Woodhaven.
A Road Transformed
The Van Wyck corridor changed dramatically after the Second World War.
The Queens Chronicle’s account of the expressway project dates the beginning of house demolition along the boulevard to May 1946.
NYC Parks’ historical account records city land acquisition in 1946 and the opening of the initial expressway on October 14, 1950.
Those events supply context for the temple’s later disappearance.
They do not establish its demolition date or cause.
The building might have been removed for the highway, transferred before clearance, or demolished during a later redevelopment.
The possibilities require parcel-level evidence.
A Site Without Its Temple
The author’s November 2026 site identification places the former temple near a grassy area within a later apartment development.
That observation establishes the absence of an identifiable surviving temple at the location as understood by the author.
A historic-map and tax-lot comparison is needed to fix the original footprint against the present landscape.
Historic aerial photographs may narrow the period of demolition.
Condemnation records, deeds and building files may explain how it occurred.
Until then, “lost temple” describes the building’s absence, not a settled account of its destruction.
Not the Building at 89-89
The property at 89-89 Van Wyck Expressway should not be substituted for Dunton’s documented address.
It is now associated with the [Imam Al-Khoei Foundation](Imam Al-Khoei Foundation, New York
Imam Al-Khoei Foundation, New York Headquartered in Jamaica, N.Y., Imam Al-Khoei Benevolent Foundation is an international, religious, charitable institution established in 1989. The center conducts various religious programs in different languages, including Arabic, Urdu, Persian and
Untapped New York’s account of the building identifies it as a former factory and office property, citing certificates of occupancy and giving a construction year of 1945.
That is a different history from the clubhouse whose cornerstone was laid in 1921.
It is also a different numbered address.
The two should not be joined merely because both stand along the Van Wyck corridor.
Members Farther Away
Death notices from the 1950s through the 1980s identify Dunton members living in places including Seaford, Massapequa, Bay Shore, New Hyde Park, Shokan, Wappingers Falls and Miami.
Those notices demonstrate continued affiliation after relocation.
They do not provide annual membership totals or establish a complete explanation for consolidation.
The author’s Grand Lodge compilation dates Dunton’s merger into Springfield Gardens Lodge No. 1057 to May 22, 1986.
The district history gives 1985.
This article follows the supplied Grand Lodge date while preserving the conflict for comparison with the original record.
The institutional line continued after Dunton ceased to operate separately.
Its meeting-place sequence between the Van Wyck temple and the merger remains incomplete.
For the complete consolidation framework, read Springfield Gardens Lodge No. 1057: Nine Lodges, One Living History.
What the Paper Preserves
Dunton’s temple survives chiefly in written references.
A cornerstone report records the club’s ambitions.
A bazaar notice shows construction continuing through public fundraising.
A visitation schedule identifies a working lodge room.
An anniversary dinner supplies an exact address.
Together, those fragments establish a substantial project even without a surviving building or complete plans.
The sequence gives the story its character.
Men affiliated with many lodges organized a neighborhood club. The club began a hall. A chartered lodge followed and helped sustain it.
The building’s disappearance remains unresolved.
Its beginning does not.
Sources and Research Notes
Newspaper citations follow the author’s supplied Dunton clippings. Direct links are provided where identified public sources are available. Unlinked historical references are preserved rather than assigned speculative URLs.
Dunton and Its Railroad Setting
Queens Borough Public Library Bulletin No. 647, April 1939, “Dunton,” as transcribed in the author’s research through dunton.org. Community origins and boundaries.
Ken Bausert, “In Search of Dunton” and “Old Richmond Hill, Revisited,” as identified in the supplied research. Dunton station history.
ARRT’s ARRCHIVES, Dunton Station. Historical station images and captions. Railroad context, not proof of the temple’s parcel history.
The Club and Building Campaign
“Dunton Masons Start Building,” Brooklyn Daily Times, October 23, 1921, p. 12. Club membership, officers, cornerstone ceremony, staged construction, proposed auditorium and estimated cost.
“Dunton Masonic Club’s Bazaar to Open Monday,” The Chat, October 27, 1923, p. 119. Building-fund purpose, dinners, prizes, journal and participating organizations.
Brooklyn Daily Times, January 4, 1925, p. 19. District visitation schedule and the Masonic Hall near Jerome.
Brooklyn Daily Times, June 21, 1925, p. 20. Fortieth stated communication and degree work.
“Dunton Lodge Incorporates,” Brooklyn Eagle, September 4, 1927, p. 43. Incorporation and trustees.
August Williams death notice, Brooklyn Eagle, August 15, 1928, p. 16. Identification with the 1927 trustee remains unconfirmed.
Temple Use and Members
“Masons Install Ruben,” Times Union, January 11, 1934, p. 6. Installation and bank delegation.
“Dunton Masons Honor A. O. Ruben,” Brooklyn Eagle, July 3, 1935, p. 4. Commission ceremony, participants and reported attendance.
Times Union, September 29 and November 24, 1935, and May 3, 1936; Brooklyn Eagle, December 22, 1935, May 3, 1936, and November 7, 1937. Social events, visits and installations.
“Charles Maas Dies: Police Honor Man,” Brooklyn Eagle, September 8, 1928, p. 3; Brooklyn Citizen, same date, p. 3. Maas’s career and commendations.
Henry Wade obituary, Times Union, May 31, 1933, p. 22. Membership and funeral connections.
“Elliott’s Funeral Held,” The New York Times, October 13, 1939. Dunton’s Master conducting rites for Robert G. Elliott. Supplementary biographical sources identified in the author’s packet concern Elliott’s electrical business and state employment.
Brooklyn Eagle, May 15, 1938, p. 8. Fifteenth-anniversary dinner at 97-15 Van Wyck Boulevard.
Later Locations and Consolidation
Members’ notices in Newsday, January 27, 1954; November 4, 1959; December 30, 1961; July 6, 1967; and May 19, 1971. The Daily Freeman, January 9 and 14, 1964, and April 8, 1975. Poughkeepsie Journal, February 20, 1985. Geographic affiliations and members’ residences, not a complete meeting-place chronology.
Grand Lodge of New York records, as compiled by Brete Murphy. Dunton’s May 3, 1923 charter and May 22, 1986 merger into Springfield Gardens No. 1057.
Queens Masonic District, Springfield Gardens lodge history. Gives 1985 for Dunton’s merger, conflicting with the supplied Grand Lodge compilation.
The Van Wyck and the Missing Building
“Making Way for Moses’ New Van Wyck,” Queens Chronicle, October 11, 2012. House demolition beginning in May 1946.
NYC Parks, “Van Wyck Expressway”. Land acquisition, highway context and October 14, 1950 opening.
Brete Murphy, site observation and identification, November 2026. Present landscape at the proposed former temple site. Historical parcel reconciliation remains necessary.
“A Factory Converted into a Mosque in Jamaica, Queens,” Untapped New York. Factory origins of 89-89 Van Wyck Expressway, with reference to occupancy records.
Imam Al-Khoei Foundation. Present institutional address at 89-89 Van Wyck Expressway.
A Note on the Evidence
The $50,000 figure is a project estimate, not a verified final cost.
The 1921 report describes staged construction. It does not establish the final number of stories or the completion date of each part.
The 1923 bazaar’s stated purpose suggests unfinished work but does not identify precisely what remained.
The club, lodge and any property-holding entity should not be treated as legally interchangeable without their records.
The 1938 anniversary is the latest clear temple event identified in this clippings selection, not proof of closure that year.
Later references to Hillside and Woodhaven do not establish a tenancy at Hillside’s temple.
Van Wyck redevelopment supplies context, not proof that the expressway caused the temple’s demolition.
The original numbered address must be reconciled with historical parcels before assigning the building’s footprint to a present-day site.
The 1986 merger date follows the author’s Grand Lodge compilation. The district history’s 1985 date remains a conflict to resolve.
Questions for Further Research
- Who owned the property during the club and lodge years?
- Was there a separate holding company?
- Who designed and built the temple?
- What portion of the 1921 proposal was completed, and when?
- Do historical photographs or plans survive?
- When did Dunton Lodge leave the Van Wyck building?
- Where did it meet afterward?
- Was the property acquired for the expressway or cleared during later development?
- What do historical aerials show between the late 1930s and the postwar decades?
- Can a condemnation record or demolition application establish the building’s final date?
- Which original Grand Lodge record resolves the 1985/1986 merger discrepancy?
Research Gateways
The [NYC Automated City Register Information System](ACRIS Error
ACRIS Error
provides a starting point for recorded property-document research. Earlier deeds and condemnation records may require additional repositories.
The NYC Municipal Archives provides information about historical city records and photographic collections.
The Brooklyn Public Library’s Brooklyn Newsstand provides information about historic newspaper access.
These are research gateways, not direct links to every deed, clipping or photograph cited above.
Continue the Springfield Gardens Series
The Main Feature
Springfield Gardens Lodge No. 1057: Nine Lodges, One Living History
Follow Dunton’s entry into the continuing lodge and the other branches of its institutional inheritance.
The Series Overview
Open the Springfield Gardens Lodge series
Find the companion lodge histories, building articles and consolidation research.
A Possible Later Woodhaven Connection
The Hillside Temple in Woodhaven
Explore the building suggested—but not established—as a later Dunton meeting place.
A Lodge in Shared Rooms
Woodhull Lodge No. 982: The Search for a Temple of Its Own
Compare another lodge history reconstructed through scattered meeting-place references.
Related Queens Building Histories
Another Hall Built Through Fundraising
Richmond Hill Masonic Temple: A Lodge Room Upstairs, a Stage Downstairs
Follow a building campaign documented from land acquisition to dedication.
Two Successive Ridgewood Temples
Tadmor’s Two Masonic Temples: From Fresh Pond Road to Summerfield Street
Compare an adapted corner property with a later purpose-built temple.
Return to the Springfield Gardens Main Feature · Springfield Gardens Series Overview
Masonic Buildings in Queens · Lodge Histories · Queens History and Freemasonry
