Queens Masonic History / Masonic Buildings / Flushing Masonic Temple
Masonic Buildings · Lodge Histories · Notable Freemasons
Cornucopia Lodge built its temple beside Flushing’s armory, within walking distance of Town Hall and the Friends Meeting House. After decades as a lodge hall and later a church, it was demolished in 2018. Its history reveals the distance between building for permanence and securing protection.
November 8, 2026 · By Brete Murphy
Part of Freemason Buildings of Queens. The companion lodge history appears in The Lodges That Built Queens.
The Building That Came Down
In the summer of 2018, a brick building at Northern Boulevard and Union Street in Flushing came down.
By the beginning of the previous year, it had been described as a vacant, two-story church on a lot 50 feet wide. Applications called for its replacement by an eight-story building: twelve apartments above retail and medical offices, approximately 55,000 square feet in all.
Demolition permits had been filed in May 2016.
The [January 2017 development report in New York YIMBY](Eight-Story, 12-Unit Mixed-Use Building Filed at 137-70 Northern Boulevard, Flushing - New York YIMBY
Eight-Story, 12-Unit Mixed-Use Building Filed at 137-70 Northern Boulevard, Flushing - New York YIMBY YIMBY has the latest news of the eight-story, 12-unit mixed-use building planned at 137-70 Northern Boulevard, in Flushing.
identified the property as 137-70 Northern Boulevard and its occupant as the Siloam Reformed Church of New York.
Before it was a church, it had been the Masonic Temple of Cornucopia Lodge No. 563.
For more than eighty years, the lodge owned a building intended to give it a lasting place on Flushing’s principal road. Its later sale, reuse and demolition tell a different story: permanence depended on more than brick walls and the intention to remain.
The institution survived elsewhere. The building did not.
For the history of the people and organization behind the property, read Cornucopia Lodge No. 563: Borrowed Aprons and the Making of Flushing.
A Temple on Broadway
When the temple was built, this stretch of Northern Boulevard was known as Broadway.
The corner at Union Street placed Cornucopia among some of Flushing’s most conspicuous public institutions.
Immediately to the west stood the recently completed state armory, a castle-like building designed by George L. Heins. Farther west was the brick Town Hall of 1862, where Cornucopia’s officers had been publicly installed in 1865.
Beyond Town Hall stood the Friends Meeting House, dating from 1694.
A temple at Union Street placed the fraternity along a road already marked by government, military and religious buildings.
That setting mattered. Cornucopia had spent about four decades meeting in rented rooms. Its own building gave the lodge something different: a recognizable address and a permanent-looking public face.
What the Postcard Shows
An undated postcard in the author’s collection, captioned “Masonic Temple, Flushing L.I., N.Y.,” records the exterior.
The front is a brick gable with a substantial cornice, a tall recessed panel and a grouped upper window. A small entrance sits beneath a pediment, with a circular medallion above it.
The long side elevation is covered in ivy. A row of round-arched upper windows suggests the position of a principal meeting space, although no interior plan has been located to establish the arrangement.
A wooden house stands beside the temple. A lower gabled section appears toward the rear.
The image does not identify the building’s architect, prove the orientation of every wall or establish whether the rear section belonged to an earlier structure.
What it does show is a substantial neighborhood hall: more restrained than a palace, but built to look settled.
A View Worth Mailing Home
The postcard was not an isolated view.
Catalog entries at the Chancellor Robert R Livingston Masonic Library identify additional cards of the Flushing temple, including examples dated broadly to 1907–1914, one dated 1921 and a 1938 view pairing the temple with the armory.
Those catalog dates should not be treated as precise construction evidence. They do show that the building circulated as an image of Flushing over a period of decades.
The temple and armory could share a postcard because they already shared a place in the neighborhood’s public landscape.
When Was It Built?
The sources do not agree.
The [New York City Organ Project’s account of the temple](Masonic Temple - Flushing (Queens), N.Y.
Masonic Temple - Flushing (Queens), N.Y.
citing James Driscoll’s Flushing 1880–1935, describes it as “built c.1905.”
A 2017 local-history column also gives 1905.
Cornucopia’s own account is more specific.
According to the lodge’s historical timeline, the cornerstone was laid on June 13, 1908. The building was dedicated on November 26 that year in a ceremony led by Grand Master Sawyer, who received an ivory gavel.
The lodge gives the construction cost as $40,000.
These are not interchangeable dates. A cornerstone ceremony and a dedication are different events, and neither should silently become a general construction date without examining the underlying records.
The most responsible wording is therefore straightforward: Cornucopia dates its temple’s cornerstone and dedication to 1908; other published sources place the building at about 1905.
A contemporary newspaper account, building application or construction record could resolve the disagreement.
A Superlative That Does Not Hold
Another claim should not be repeated without qualification: that the temple was Flushing’s first multi-story brick building.
The brick Town Hall of 1862 stood nearby.
Whatever distinction the temple’s builders intended, that broad claim does not survive comparison with an older building on the same road.
The temple’s importance does not require a first-of-its-kind label. Its significance lies in what it meant for Cornucopia and in the public setting it occupied.
What Stood There Before?
The site’s earlier history is even less settled.
A 2017 column connects the property with a seventeenth-century land purchase, a Revolutionary blockhouse or guardhouse, an Orthodox Quaker meeting house dated to 1827, and a building dated to 1854.
Its descriptions leave the sequence unclear. At different points, an earlier building is said to have been demolished or to have remained attached to the temple.
Without cited deeds, maps or building records, these statements cannot be assembled into a reliable history of this particular lot.
One part of the broader account has independent archival support: Flushing had a separate Orthodox Friends meeting after the Quaker separation of 1827–1828. Records of the Flushing Preparative Meeting of Friends, Orthodox, extend from 1828 to its discontinuance in 1886.
That establishes the religious organization’s existence. It does not, by itself, locate its meeting house on the temple parcel.
Nor does it establish whether an earlier building was demolished, incorporated or left standing beside the lodge hall.
The lower rear section visible in the postcard is a clue, not an answer.
The next evidence must come from property records and historic maps rather than from repeating the site’s accumulated legends.
Inside: The Organ Contract
The clearest surviving evidence of the temple’s interior equipment is a pipe-organ agreement.
On February 25, 1914, M. P. Möller of Hagerstown, Maryland, contracted with the Masonic Lodge of Flushing to provide an organ ready for use by August 1, or as soon afterward as possible.
The instrument was Möller’s Opus 1737.
According to the New York City Organ Project’s transcription of the agreement and specifications, it had two manuals, or keyboards, eight stops and eight ranks of pipes.
Its tubular-pneumatic action used air pressure to operate the mechanism. The case was quartered oak.
A notation records shipment on July 25, 1914.
The contract price was $2,000, payable in cash upon completion.
That last detail establishes the payment terms—not that a receipt survives proving how or when the bill was paid.
Even with that limitation, the agreement is revealing. Cornucopia was commissioning a substantial musical instrument for its meeting place, not merely furnishing an empty rental room.
The organ gives the building’s otherwise poorly documented interior a tangible presence: oak, pipes, keyboards and music.
Its later fate remains unknown.
More Than One Lodge Under the Roof
The temple was not used by Cornucopia alone.
A district calendar published in the Brooklyn Daily Times on January 4, 1925, placed Service Lodge No. 1009 at the Masonic Temple on Broadway in Flushing.
Service had been chartered in 1923.
Its presence establishes shared Masonic use of the building. The surviving reference does not establish the full date range, rent or other terms of occupancy.
For Cornucopia, the arrangement marked a reversal of its earliest circumstances.
It had begun by paying rent to another fraternity. Now another lodge met in its building.
For Service, the temple supplied an established room in the community it served.
Read the companion institutional history, Service Lodge No. 1009 and the Work of Relief in Flushing.
Service’s later lineage continues in One Lodge, Six Charters, the history of the lodges that converge in Advance Service Mizpah Lodge No. 586.
The Church Years
According to Cornucopia’s published history, rising real estate taxes forced the lodge to sell the temple in 1990.
That explanation comes from the lodge. The deed, sale price and financial records would be needed to reconstruct the transaction independently.
The first purchaser has not been established in the evidence assembled here.
The building subsequently housed the Siloam Reformed Church of New York. A 2009 church directory placed that congregation at 137-70 Northern Boulevard.
Whether Siloam purchased directly from Cornucopia, or acquired the property later, remains unresolved.
The change of use preserved the hall for a time. A building designed for one kind of assembly accommodated another.
The continuity was physical rather than institutional: a lodge room became part of a church’s premises, while Cornucopia carried on elsewhere.
The Bayside Question
Later reports connect a congregation of the same name with property in Bayside.
The New York City Organ Project also identifies the former Bayside Masonic Temple on Bell Boulevard with Siloam church use.
Those references raise an interesting possibility: that the congregation moved between two former Masonic buildings.
They do not, without further organizational or property records, prove that sequence.
For the Flushing temple, the firmer endpoint is the January 2017 development report. By then, it described the church building as vacant.
Not an Individual Landmark
Later accounts report that the Landmarks Preservation Commission declined to pursue designation in 2014.
They quote a commission spokeswoman saying the building “did not rise to the level of an Individual Landmark.”
That sentence is the extent of the commission’s explanation available in the research assembled for this article.
No Request for Evaluation response, staff assessment or fuller decision file has been examined here.
It would therefore be misleading to describe a public designation hearing, a formal rejection vote or the commission’s reasoning beyond the reported quotation.
It would also be misleading to place the temple within the commission’s wider backlog controversy without evidence that this property belonged to that process.
The practical result was clear enough: the temple did not receive individual landmark protection before its demolition.
Why the commission considered it insufficiently significant remains a question for its records.
From Hall to Development Site
By January 2017, the proposed replacement had been described in detail.
- Eight stories, rising 97 feet to the roof.
- A total project area of 54,983 square feet.
- Approximately 14,251 square feet of retail space across portions of the first three floors.
- Approximately 5,361 square feet of medical offices on the third floor.
- Twelve apartments on the fourth through eighth floors.
- An 8,000-square-foot lot with a frontage of 50 feet.
The report identified Ling Li’s Flushing-based firm as architect of record for the proposed replacement—not for the historic temple.
These were application figures. They describe what was proposed at that time, not proof of what was ultimately constructed.
Demolition permits had been filed in May 2016.
The former temple was demolished in 2018, according to the lodge’s history and the later account [“Requiem for the Razed Flushing Cornucopia Masonic Temple”](Requiem For The Razed Flushing Cornucopia Masonic Temple
Requiem For The Razed Flushing Cornucopia Masonic Temple Requiem for the Cornucopia Lodge Masonic Temple which was razed this past Summer of 2018
The replacement’s completion and final form require separate verification.
The Arithmetic of a Corner
The contrast between the old building and the proposal is striking.
A two-story hall occupied an 8,000-square-foot lot. The filed replacement proposed almost 55,000 square feet distributed among housing, retail and medical offices.
That comparison explains the scale of the proposed change.
It does not establish the property’s sale price, the developer’s profit or the financial motives of each owner.
Nor does it prove, by itself, that the land was worth more than the existing building. That familiar explanation requires valuation evidence that has not yet been assembled.
What the record does establish is a succession of uses and decisions.
Cornucopia reported that it could no longer carry the property’s taxes. A church occupied the building afterward. The building later stood vacant. Development applications sought substantially more floor space. Demolition followed.
The corner remained useful. The old hall was no longer the form in which its owners intended to use it.
Intention Was Not Protection
The temple had been placed among buildings that appeared to promise continuity.
The armory survived beside it. Town Hall and the Friends Meeting House survived farther along the road.
Cornucopia’s building did not share their preservation circumstances.
A lodge’s investment, an organ contract, decades of meetings and a place on postcards had made the temple part of Flushing’s life. They did not secure its future.
Its loss should not erase the distinction between the building and the organization.
Cornucopia Lodge remains active, meeting in College Point rather than on the corner it once owned. The institution continued after the property changed hands.
The temple’s story ended differently.
It had been built to look permanent. What it lacked, when its use and ownership changed, was a durable means of remaining.
Sources and Research Notes
The Building, Demolition and Replacement Proposal
- [“Eight-Story, 12-Unit Mixed-Use Building Filed at 137-70 Northern Boulevard, Flushing”](Eight-Story, 12-Unit Mixed-Use Building Filed at 137-70 Northern Boulevard, Flushing - New York YIMBY
Eight-Story, 12-Unit Mixed-Use Building Filed at 137-70 Northern Boulevard, Flushing - New York YIMBY YIMBY has the latest news of the eight-story, 12-unit mixed-use building planned at 137-70 Northern Boulevard, in Flushing.
New York YIMBY, January 12, 2017. Vacant two-story church, lot dimensions, May 2016 demolition-permit filing, proposed height, floor area, uses and replacement architect.
“Requiem for the Razed Flushing Cornucopia Masonic Temple”, Flushing.com, March 18, 2019. Retrospective account of the temple and its 2018 demolition.
Cornucopia Lodge No. 563, “Our History”. Lodge account of the 1908 cornerstone and dedication, $40,000 cost, 1990 sale and 2018 demolition.
Construction Date and Organ
“Masonic Temple,” New York City Organ Project, New York City chapter, American Guild of Organists. Approximate construction date of 1905; Möller Opus 1737; agreement and specifications dated February 25, 1914; shipment notation of July 25, 1914; $2,000 contract price.
James Driscoll, Flushing 1880–1935, Arcadia Publishing, 2005. Cited by the New York City Organ Project for its building history.
M. P. Möller, Agreement and Specifications, February 25, 1914, Opus 1737. Described and transcribed by the New York City Organ Project, courtesy Larry Trupiano.
Images and Civic Setting
Author’s undated postcard, “Masonic Temple, Flushing L.I., N.Y.” Basis for the exterior description. The orientation and interior uses inferred from the image remain provisional.
Chancellor Robert R Livingston Masonic Library postcard catalog. Temple views catalogued as 1907–1914 and 1921, and a 1938 view pairing the temple with the armory. Catalog dating does not independently establish the construction year.
New York State Military Museum materials on the Flushing Armory; published histories of Flushing Town Hall; Landmarks Preservation Commission designation report for the Friends Meeting House, 1970. Context for the neighboring buildings.
Earlier Site History
Antos local-history column, August 30, 2017; Queens Crap, February 6, 2017. Sources for the disputed accounts of a Revolutionary structure and earlier Orthodox Quaker buildings. These claims require map and deed verification.
Haverford and Swarthmore archival finding aid for Flushing Preparative Meeting of Friends, Orthodox, 1828–1886. Evidence for the meeting’s existence and dates, not independent proof of its location on the temple parcel.
Shared Lodge Use
Brooklyn Daily Times, January 4, 1925. District calendar placing Service Lodge No. 1009 at the Masonic Temple on Broadway, Flushing.
Advance Service Mizpah lineage research. Service Lodge’s later institutional history. The full date range and financial terms of its occupancy at the temple remain unconfirmed.
Sale, Church Use and Preservation
Cornucopia Lodge historical timeline and the 2019 Flushing.com article. Attribution of the 1990 sale to real estate taxes.
QNS church directory, November 2009. Siloam Reformed Church at 137-70 Northern Boulevard.
Queens Chronicle, February 5, 2015; New York City Organ Project, Queens listings. References relevant to Siloam church use in Bayside. A direct organizational and property connection with the Flushing congregation remains to be established.
Queens Crap, February 6, 2017, and the Antos column of August 30, 2017. Secondary reports of the 2014 Landmarks Preservation Commission response, quoting spokeswoman Damaris Olivo. The underlying commission file has not been examined.
A Note on Addresses and Evidence
This article uses 137-70 Northern Boulevard, the address given by the New York City Organ Project, the 2009 church directory reference and the 2017 development report.
Other accounts use 137-66 Northern Boulevard. A deed and tax-lot comparison is needed to reconcile the variants.
The intersection is identified here as Union Street. The organ-history page uses “Union Avenue.”
The construction date remains disputed. The lodge gives a June 13, 1908 cornerstone and November 26, 1908 dedication; other sources give approximately 1905.
The architect and builder of the historic temple have not been established.
The organ contract establishes specifications, shipment and payment terms. It does not establish a surviving payment receipt or the instrument’s eventual fate.
Service Lodge’s use is documented by a 1925 calendar. Rental income, tenancy terms and the complete occupancy period are not established.
The 1990 sale explanation is attributed to Cornucopia. The first purchaser and the date Siloam acquired the property require deed research.
The reported 2014 preservation response is not treated as evidence of a designation hearing or formal commission vote.
The 2017 replacement proposal is not presented as a verified account of the completed building.
Continue Exploring
The Lodge Behind the Temple
Read Cornucopia Lodge No. 563: Borrowed Aprons and the Making of Flushing
Follow the institution from its 1864 beginnings to its continuing life beyond the building it once owned.
Another Lodge Under the Roof
Read Service Lodge No. 1009 and the Work of Relief in Flushing
Explore the history of another lodge that used the Flushing temple.
Buildings Across the Borough
Explore Masonic Buildings in Queens
Discover rented rooms, purpose-built temples and the later lives of former meeting places.
The Continuing Lodge Lineage
Trace the institutional histories that converge in Advance Service Mizpah Lodge No. 586.
Return to Masonic Buildings · Browse Lodge Histories · Queens History Reader’s Guide
