Queens History and Freemasonry / Harmony Series / Main Feature
November 10, 2026 · By Brete Murphy
Harmony Lodge No. 241 carries a number rooted in 1851 Manhattan and the institutional histories of five Queens lodges. Following their meeting places—from Manhattan halls to Astoria, Jamaica and northeast Queens—reveals a history of shared rooms, changing membership geography and consolidation.
Harmony Series Overview · Lineage at a Glance · Begin with Constitution Lodge · Sources and Research Notes
Friday Night in College Point
On the first and third Friday of most months, Harmony Lodge No. 241 meets at Masonic Hall, 18-14 College Point Boulevard.
The Grand Lodge listing identifies stated communications in January through June and September through December.1
For a reader arriving at the present meeting place, the number offers a clue to a much older history.
No. 241 began with Oscar Coles Lodge in Manhattan in 1851. That lodge became Constitution Lodge in 1867.
Harmony’s present institutional identity dates to a November 21, 1990 consolidation, according to the author’s compilation of Grand Lodge records. Its predecessor branches reach into Manhattan, Astoria, Maspeth, Jamaica, Bayside and Douglaston.2
Counted through those branches, Harmony represents six lodge histories.
The research assembled for this article has not identified a purpose-built temple owned by any of those six predecessor lodges.
That is a statement about the present evidence, not proof that none ever held real estate.
What the sources do repeatedly document is the use of existing halls and other lodges’ buildings.
Follow those meeting places, and another geography of Queens Masonry comes into view.
Six Lodges, One Number
The six predecessor histories are:
- Oscar Coles Lodge No. 241, later Constitution Lodge, originating in Manhattan in 1851.
- King David Lodge No. 994, associated with Astoria.
- Maspeth Lodge No. 1089.
- Rufus King Lodge No. 1091, associated with Jamaica.
- North Shore Lodge No. 1149, associated with Douglaston and Bayside.
- Cardozo Lodge No. 1150, associated with Bayside.
The author’s Grand Lodge compilation dates King David’s charter to May 3, 1922; Maspeth’s and Rufus King’s to May 3, 1928; and North Shore’s and Cardozo’s to May 4, 1955.2
Harmony’s public history gives different summary years for King David and Maspeth. Those differences require comparison with the original charter and institution records rather than an assumption that every source is describing the same milestone.3
Four consolidations brought the six branches together.
Constitution and Maspeth combined in 1974. King David and Cardozo combined in 1975. Their successor received Rufus King in 1982. In 1990, the two combined branches joined North Shore to form Harmony.2
In the sequence recorded in the author’s compilation, the lower—and older—number continued at each consolidation.
That pattern should not be mistaken for a demonstrated universal rule governing every lodge merger.
Lineage at a Glance
| Date | Institutional change | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 1851 | Oscar Coles Lodge No. 241 begins in Manhattan. | The oldest numbered branch represented in Harmony. |
| 1867 | Oscar Coles Lodge is renamed Constitution Lodge. | Constitution Lodge No. 241. |
| 1974 | Constitution and Maspeth consolidate. | Maspeth-Constitution No. 241. |
| 1975 | Cardozo and King David consolidate. | Cardozo-King David No. 994. |
| 1982 | Rufus King joins the Cardozo-King David branch. | Cardozo-Rufus-King-David No. 994, as recorded in the supplied compilation. |
| November 21, 1990 | Maspeth-Constitution, Cardozo-Rufus-King-David and North Shore consolidate. | Harmony Lodge No. 241. |
The consolidation chronology follows the author’s Grand Lodge compilation. Exact official name forms and conflicting dates should be compared with the original instruments. Institutional succession does not establish possession of every predecessor’s physical charter or records.2
A Manhattan Beginning
Harmony’s oldest branch began as Oscar Coles Lodge.
According to the lodge’s published history, members of Lafayette Lodge No. 64 petitioned to organize the new body in 1851. They named it for the newly elected Grand Master, Oscar Coles.
On December 24, Coles installed its first officers.
The same account describes the original members as merchants or sailors engaged in the seafaring business.3
The living namesake eventually became a subject of concern within the lodge.
After discussion and a petition to Grand Lodge, permission to adopt the name Constitution Lodge No. 241 was granted on June 8, 1867.3
A Lodge Moving Through Manhattan
The published history traces a succession of meeting places.
The lodge began at Broome and Crosby Streets. In 1858, it moved to Odd Fellows Hall at Grand and Centre Streets.
Further moves took it to 594 Broadway in 1866, the Booth Theatre Building in 1869, the original Grand Lodge building in 1874 and the present Grand Lodge building in 1909.3
That account follows the institution’s movement through Manhattan’s meeting halls.
Newspaper funeral and obituary notices supply a different geography: the places associated with individual members.
The references assembled for this series include Ludlow Street, Third Avenue and the old Tenth Ward in the nineteenth century, followed by Brooklyn, Harlem, Marble Hill and Staten Island in later decades.4
Those examples are not a complete map of the membership.
They do show why a lodge’s meeting address should not be treated as a boundary around the lives of its members.
Read Constitution Lodge No. 241: From Manhattan Beginnings to a Queens Consolidation.
The 1920s Wave
Three more branches of Harmony emerged during the 1920s.
Their names appeared among the participating lodges in coverage of the 1929 Queens Masonic charity ball at the Hotel Pennsylvania.5
Their meeting places connected them with an existing network of Masonic buildings.
King David used the Astoria Masonic Temple at 114 Grand Avenue. The author’s Advance Lodge research identifies that address with the later 21-14 30th Avenue and connects the building with Advance Lodge No. 635’s 1915–1916 temple project.6
The historic-to-modern address correspondence belongs to the building’s separate research record and should be checked against maps and property documentation before further architectural conclusions are drawn.
Maspeth and Rufus King were constituted on May 19, 1928, at Tadmor Temple in Ridgewood, alongside Suburban Lodge.
The newspaper coverage described delegations from all thirty-two Queens lodges.7
Their participation in one ceremony did not make them permanent occupants of the same building.
Rufus King’s later notices place it at Jamaica’s Masonic temple on Union Avenue, subsequently 162nd Street.8
Read Jamaica Lodge on Union Avenue: A Chapel Moved, a Temple Made.
Three Neighborhoods, Different Records
The surviving notices do not give each lodge an equally detailed public history.
They reveal different events, individuals and kinds of activity.
King David in Astoria
King David’s notices describe ladies’ nights, degree work, visiting Masons and lectures.
Subjects included Lincoln and “Jewish Humor.” In 1954, the lodge participated with a Brooklyn lodge in a Masonic service at the Astoria Center of Israel.9
These events document Jewish religious and cultural connections within the lodge’s public life.
They do not establish exclusive Jewish membership or, without a fuller roster, the religious composition of the entire institution.
The social events also show a lodge whose activities extended beyond ordinary stated meetings.
Read King David Lodge No. 994: Lodge Life in Astoria.
Rufus King in Jamaica
Rufus King’s 1929 City Officials’ Night brought public officials into the lodge’s setting, including the borough president, district attorney and judges.
Other references connect its officers and members with department-store management, the law, dentistry and manufacturing.
The research also identifies five Lewin brothers associated with the lodge and a 1935 notice canceling a meeting for Passover.10
These are specific connections between fraternity, work, family and religious observance.
They should not be expanded into a claim that lodge membership itself produced political influence or professional advancement.
Read Rufus King Lodge No. 1091: A Jamaica Lodge in the Public Eye.
Maspeth’s Quieter Trail
The Maspeth material assembled for this series is less extensive.
It includes funeral notices, a 1950 bowling achievement and an obituary for a painter and decorator whose membership extended over forty years.11
Those references preserve ordinary forms of continuity: recreation, long affiliation and the performance of funeral services.
The smaller body of located coverage does not prove that Maspeth was less active or less public than the other lodges.
It describes the present research record.
Read Maspeth Lodge No. 1089: A Neighborhood History.
Postwar Northeast Queens
North Shore and Cardozo added two postwar branches.
The author’s Grand Lodge compilation dates both charters to May 4, 1955, with the consecutive numbers 1149 and 1150.2
Their neighborhood associations place them in the Bayside and Douglaston portion of this history.
General accounts of Bayside and Douglaston–Little Neck provide background, but they do not establish the occupations, housing circumstances or commuting patterns of the lodges’ memberships.12
Individual North Shore notices identify a supermarket butcher, a savings-and-loan mortgage officer and a Marine veteran among the members researched for this series.13
Cardozo’s independent record is thinner in the material assembled so far.
The author’s research notes identify meeting-place connections with Hillside in Woodhaven and a Masonic temple in Hollis. They also record a Bayside association for Maspeth.13
Those references need dates and supporting citations before they can become a continuous meeting-place chronology.
They suggest movement within the borough. They do not yet explain every move.
Read North Shore Lodge No. 1149: A Postwar Lodge in Northeast Queens and Cardozo Lodge No. 1150: The Record So Far.
Where the Members Went
Later notices place members well beyond their lodges’ original neighborhoods.
The examples assembled here include Maspeth members in Huntington, Dix Hills and Ridge; a Rufus King Master living in Westbury; and North Shore members in Florida and North Carolina.14
These references demonstrate that membership could continue after relocation.
They do not establish how often distant members attended or why a particular consolidation was approved.
Other notices describe King David, Cardozo-King David and Maspeth-Constitution with a Forest Hills association.15
That geographic wording is not enough to assign all three to a specific building.
A Forest Hills temple on Metropolitan Avenue is a research lead, not a confirmed meeting place for every notice cited.
One Documented Explanation
Constitution’s published history offers a specific account of its 1974 decision.
It states that many members were then living in Queens and that the lodge voted to merge with Maspeth.3
That explanation belongs to Constitution’s history.
It should not automatically become the explanation for every other merger in Harmony’s lineage.
The broader pattern is one of institutions maintaining affiliation across changing residential geographies. The reasons for each union require their own evidence.
How Consolidation Changed the Institution
The author’s research notes describe consolidation as a process involving the practical business of combining lodges: bylaws, officers, accounts and arrangements for continuing work.16
The surviving instruments and minutes would be needed to show how those tasks were handled in each of Harmony’s predecessor unions.
The official date identifies a milestone. It does not necessarily capture the beginning of discussions or every transition afterward.
A November 1976 newspaper item concerning the Cardozo-King David Charity Foundation reported annual giving of $5,000 to local organizations.17
That notice documents charitable activity associated with the combined name.
The foundation’s legal relationship to the lodge should not be assumed without its own records.
Old Names in Later Notices
The compound names did not immediately replace every older form of identification.
In 1992, a Staten Island newspaper described Albert Mac Neill as a Past Master of “the former Constitution Lodge of Masons, now the Harmony Lodge in Queens.”
A 1995 notice identified Anthony Romano with Maspeth Masonic Lodge No. 1089.
In 1996, Emil Corsi was described as a Past Master of “Cardoza King David,” preserving the spelling used in the notice.18
These references show older affiliations remaining meaningful in biographical accounts.
They are evidence of remembered institutional identity, not proof that the predecessor lodges were still operating separately.
The Formation of Harmony
On November 21, 1990, the author’s Grand Lodge compilation records the consolidation of:
- Maspeth-Constitution No. 241.
- Cardozo-Rufus-King-David No. 994.
- North Shore No. 1149.
The resulting institution became Harmony Lodge No. 241.2
The number from the oldest branch continued under a new name.
A later Harmony notice remembered Bertram Eckert as the final Master of Cardozo-Rufus-King-David in 1990.
The 2017 notice also described his long Masonic membership and World War II service.19
It provides a personal connection between a predecessor institution and the lodge that continued after consolidation.
The Borough Inside the Lodge
The individual biographies assembled for this series include tradesmen, salesmen, postal employees, manufacturers, a department-store executive, a magistrate, a dentist, a butcher and a mortgage officer.410111314
This is not a statistical survey.
It is a collection of documented lives through which the institutional history becomes more tangible.
The lodges’ names identify neighborhoods. Their members’ addresses show that those affiliations could persist far beyond neighborhood boundaries.
Their meeting places reveal another distinction: the history of a lodge did not always depend on ownership of a temple.
An institution could move between rooms, combine with another body and retain members who had moved farther away.
A Continuing Lodge in a Shared Hall
Harmony’s current public listing brings the story back to College Point.
The address is a present meeting place, not the origin of all the histories represented there.1
The oldest branch began in Manhattan in 1851. Other branches began in different Queens neighborhoods and in different generations.
By 1990, their institutional lines had come together under one name and number.
The evidence assembled here does not prove an unbroken history of never owning property.
It does establish a recurring pattern of making a lodge home within an existing hall.
Harmony’s story is therefore more than a succession of charters and consolidation dates.
It is also a history of rooms—and of institutions whose continuity extended beyond any one building.
Sources and Research Notes
Public institutional pages are linked directly below. Newspaper references follow the author’s supplied manuscript and research notes; direct clipping URLs were not supplied.
- [Grand Lodge of New York connect: Harmony No. 241](connect | Grand Lodge of New York
connect | Grand Lodge of New York
[meeting-place information](Groupable
Groupable
Craft Papers lodge listing. College Point address and first-and-third-Friday schedule for January–June and September–December. A meeting-place listing does not establish legal ownership of the building.
2. Grand Lodge of New York records, as compiled by Brete Murphy. Source for the charter and consolidation chronology presented here. The original instruments were not independently examined for this conversion. Harmony’s public historical summary gives different years for King David and Maspeth; the discrepancy should be resolved by distinguishing charter, institution and constitution dates.
3. Harmony Lodge’s published history; [Grand Lodge connect history page](Groupable
Groupable
Oscar Coles origins, first officers, seafaring account, Manhattan meeting-place sequence, 1867 renaming and explanation of the 1974 Constitution–Maspeth merger. The public narrative sometimes continues using the earlier name after the stated renaming; this article uses Constitution for the later period.
4. New York Herald, February 25–26, 1870, and January 4, 1875; New-York Tribune, February 4, 1920, and November 22, 1922; Staten Island Advance, February 13, 1952, and April 7, 1958. Constitution-associated funeral and obituary references. See the Constitution companion article for individual identifications.
5. Brooklyn Eagle, November 23, 1929, p. 4. Queens Masonic charity ball and participating lodge references.
6. Advance Lodge No. 635 records, as supplied in the author’s research; Give Me Astoria; Brooklyn Daily Times, January 25, 1925, p. 63. Astoria temple history, King David’s meeting-place reference and proposed historic-to-modern address correspondence. Exact web article and archival references remain to be added.
7. Brooklyn Daily Times, May 17, 1928, p. 10; “Three New Lodges Are Established in Queens by Masons,” Brooklyn Eagle, May 20, 1928, p. 8. Constitution ceremony at Tadmor for Maspeth, Rufus King and Suburban.
8. Jamaica Lodge on Union Avenue: A Chapel Moved, a Temple Made; Daily News, June 30, 1957, and June 23, 1959. Jamaica temple and Rufus King meeting-place references. Individual address forms should be checked against the original notices.
9. Brooklyn Daily Times, November 1, 1925, and November 14, 1926; Times Union, March 24, 1935; Brooklyn Record, April 2, 1954. King David social, educational and religious events.
10. The Chat, June 28, 1929; Brooklyn Eagle, August 19, 1954; Daily News, January 9, 1950; Times Union, April 21, 1935. Rufus King events, members and Passover cancellation notice.
11. Times Union, February 26, 1930; Newsday, May 13, 1950, and December 9, 1971. Maspeth funeral, bowling and long-membership references.
12. “Bayside” and “Douglaston–Little Neck,” Wikipedia, as identified in the supplied manuscript. General neighborhood background only; not evidence of the lodges’ membership composition.
13. Brete Murphy, lodge research notes, November 2026; News-Press, December 1, 1983; Asheville Times, December 27, 1987. Postwar lodge biographies and meeting-place leads. Individual claims require matching to their underlying records before a detailed occupancy chronology is published.
14. Newsday, December 9, 1971, October 13, 1987, and August 12, 1981; Westbury Times, February 1, 1973; News-Press, December 1, 1983; Asheville Times, December 27, 1987. Later residences and continuing affiliations.
15. Herald Statesman, January 14, 1972; Staten Island Advance, November 15, 1978; The Post-Star, January 31, 1983; Rego-Forest Preservation Council material identified in the author’s research. Forest Hills descriptions and a possible temple connection. A specific meeting building is not established for every lodge by these geographic descriptions alone.
16. Brete Murphy, notes on Grand Lodge consolidation practice, November 2026. General process account; not a substitute for each consolidation’s minutes, agreement or instrument.
17. Daily News, November 17, 1976, p. 634. Cardozo-King David Charity Foundation and reported annual giving.
18. Staten Island Advance, March 1, 1992, p. 68; Newsday, February 14, 1995, p. 24, and July 28, 1996, p. 62. Albert Mac Neill, Anthony Romano and Emil Corsi; later use of predecessor lodge names.
19. Harmony Lodge notice concerning Bertram Eckert, Queens Masonic Association Facebook page, August 18, 2017, as identified in the author’s research. Direct post URL remains to be added.
A Note on the Evidence
“Six lodge histories” describes the predecessor branches represented through consolidation. It does not establish that Harmony holds six original physical charters.
The absence of a located temple-ownership record is not proof that no predecessor ever owned real estate.
The present meeting address does not establish building ownership or the legal terms of occupancy.
King David’s and Maspeth’s founding-year differences require comparison with original records.
Religious observances and individual affiliations do not establish exclusive religious membership.
Obituaries show individual lives and later residences, not a complete demographic survey or a demonstrated cause of consolidation.
Forest Hills, Bayside and other geographic descriptions should not be converted into precise meeting addresses without additional evidence.
The consolidation dates and name forms follow the author’s Grand Lodge compilation where indicated.
Continue the Harmony Series
The Oldest Branch
Constitution Lodge No. 241: From Manhattan Beginnings to a Queens Consolidation
Follow Oscar Coles Lodge, its renaming and its movement through Manhattan meeting places.
Astoria
King David Lodge No. 994: Lodge Life in Astoria
Explore the lodge’s ceremonies, social events and documented religious connections.
Maspeth
Maspeth Lodge No. 1089: A Neighborhood History
Read the surviving record of recreation, long membership and neighborhood affiliation.
Jamaica
Rufus King Lodge No. 1091: A Jamaica Lodge in the Public Eye
Follow the lodge’s public occasions, members and use of Jamaica’s temple.
Northeast Queens
North Shore Lodge No. 1149: A Postwar Lodge in Northeast Queens
Explore one of the two 1955 branches.
Cardozo Lodge No. 1150: The Record So Far
Examine the documented history and remaining gaps in the other postwar branch.
Explore the Meeting Places
Jamaica Lodge on Union Avenue: A Chapel Moved, a Temple Made
Read the building history behind Rufus King’s Jamaica meeting-place references.
Suburban Lodge at Tadmor Temple: A Shared Masonic Home in Ridgewood
Explore another lodge’s use of the building that hosted Maspeth’s and Rufus King’s constitution ceremony.
Queens Village Community House: A Lodge Room Without a Temple
Compare a different example of lodge life within an existing community building.
Harmony Series Overview · Next: Constitution Lodge No. 241 · Return to the Lineage
Lodge Histories · Masonic Buildings in Queens · Queens History and Freemasonry
