By Brete Murphy · November 10, 2026
An institution founded in Manhattan in 1851, three Queens lodges chartered during the 1920s and two chartered on the same day in 1955 came together as Harmony Lodge No. 241. Their histories connect several generations of lodge organization—and a succession of shared rooms.
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Harmony Lodge No. 241 took its present name in 1990.
Its number is much older.
No. 241 belonged to a Manhattan lodge constituted in 1851, later known as Constitution.
Five Queens institutions eventually joined that history: King David, Maspeth, Rufus King, North Shore and Cardozo.
Their beginnings fall into three periods.
The first belongs to mid-nineteenth-century Manhattan.
The second belongs to the organization of new Queens lodges during the 1920s.
The third belongs to the postwar period, when North Shore and Cardozo received their charters on the same day in 1955.
Their later consolidations brought those histories together.
The meeting-place record supplies another connection. Several constituent lodges used rooms in buildings associated with other institutions.
How complete that pattern was remains a research question.
The available references establish shared premises. They do not yet establish that no constituent lodge ever owned property.
The Number Begins in Manhattan
Oscar Coles Lodge No. 241 was constituted on December 24, 1851, according to the author’s compilation.
The supplied history places its beginning in a loft at Broome and Crosby Streets.
Its name honored Oscar Coles, identified in the research as a ship chandler and Grand Master of New York in 1851.
On June 8, 1867, the lodge became Constitution Lodge No. 241.[1]
That was a name change within the continuing institution, not an additional lodge in Harmony’s constituent count.
The number remained.
Constitution’s later movement toward Queens is less clearly documented.
Its 1974 consolidation with Maspeth establishes an institutional connection with a Queens lodge.
It does not establish when Constitution first met in Queens, where those meetings occurred or whether a move preceded the consolidation.
Those questions should remain open rather than being answered through a general account of Manhattan members moving east.
The documented continuity is the institution and its number.
The address chronology still needs work.
King David: A Lodge in Advance’s Temple
King David Lodge No. 994 received its charter on May 3, 1922.
Its early meeting place was the Advance Masonic Temple, then identified by the address 114 Grand Avenue.
The author’s research describes Advance’s approval of the new lodge’s use of the building.
From October 1934, King David met at Castle Hall on 31st Avenue, a building also used by Astoria Lodge.[2]
These references connect Harmony’s lineage with two other present lines.
Advance belongs within Advance Service Mizpah.
Astoria later consolidated with Anchor and is represented within Anchor-Astoria.
King David remained institutionally separate from both while sharing their meeting environments.
The distinction is important.
A shared building could bring lodges into practical contact without combining their charters.
The earlier manuscript also described King David as having a strong Jewish membership.
That subject deserves documentation through membership records, contemporary descriptions and individual biographies.
The lodge’s name and selected members’ names alone do not establish the composition of its whole membership.
Read Advance Service Mizpah’s Lineage Essay →
Read The Thirteen Who Left Advance: Astoria’s Beginning →
Maspeth and Rufus King: One Ceremony, Separate Institutions
Maspeth Lodge No. 1089 and Rufus King Lodge No. 1091 received their charters on May 3, 1928.
Their constitution followed on May 19 at Tadmor’s temple in Ridgewood.
Suburban Lodge No. 1087 was constituted at the same gathering.
The supplied newspaper reports describe Grand Master John A. Dutton conducting the occasion, assisted by district officers including Charles W. Froessel, before a large assembly of Queens Masons.[3]
The shared ceremony did not place the three new lodges in one institutional line.
Maspeth and Rufus King eventually became constituents of Harmony.
Suburban’s later history entered Springfield Gardens.
Tadmor continued independently.
The room connected their beginnings. Their later decisions separated their paths.
Read Tadmor: One Charter, Many Rooms →
Read Charles W. Froessel: From Tadmor’s East to the Grand East →
Read Springfield Gardens: Nine Lodge Histories →
Rufus King and Civic Jamaica
Rufus King’s meeting-place history includes Jamaica Lodge’s former chapel on Union Avenue.
Its name connected it with the historical figure associated with King Manor.
The author’s research identifies members active in Jamaica’s commercial, professional and public life, including Harry Gertz of the Gertz department stores.[4]
Those individual affiliations provide a route into the lodge’s relationship with its surroundings.
They do not establish that the lodge represented all of Jamaica’s civic leadership.
Nor should selected biographies automatically be converted into a demographic description of the entire membership.
The strongest account begins with the people who can be identified, their documented lodge affiliations and the work they performed.
Jamaica’s building supplied another relationship.
Rufus King used premises associated with Jamaica Lodge without becoming part of Jamaica’s later consolidation line.
The host institution’s history eventually entered Springfield Gardens. Rufus King’s entered Harmony.
Read Jamaica Lodge’s Rooms and Union Avenue Hall →
North Shore and Cardozo: The Same Charter Date
The final two constituent beginnings came on May 4, 1955.
North Shore Lodge No. 1149 and Cardozo Lodge No. 1150 received their charters that day, according to the author’s Grand Lodge compilation.
The supplied research associates North Shore with Douglaston and Bayside, and Cardozo with Bayside.[1]
That common date places them within the same period of lodge organization.
It does not establish identical founding memberships, purposes or meeting arrangements.
North Shore’s history remains particularly incomplete.
Its founders, early premises and later address sequence require further research.
Cardozo’s meeting-place references include Hillside and Hollis in the author’s notes, but the dates and duration of those occupancies still need to be established.
Its name may suggest Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo.
The supplied material does not document the dedication, so the namesake remains unresolved here.
Read Maspeth, North Shore and Cardozo: Three Histories Behind Harmony →
Four Consolidation Events
The author’s compilation supplies the following sequence:
| Date | Institutional change |
|---|---|
| May 8, 1974 | Constitution and Maspeth combined as Maspeth-Constitution No. 241 |
| November 1975 | King David and Cardozo combined as Cardozo-King David No. 994 |
| February 12, 1982 | Rufus King joined that body as Cardozo-Rufus-King-David No. 994 |
| November 21, 1990 | Maspeth-Constitution, Cardozo-Rufus-King-David and North Shore combined as Harmony Lodge No. 241 |
These four events brought the six constituent histories together.
The final event combined three existing bodies rather than two.[1]
The resulting lodge retained No. 241, the number associated with the oldest constituent institution.
The same pattern of retaining the oldest constituent number appears in the earlier combinations listed here.
The formal resolutions are still needed to establish how the members described their reasons for selecting the names and numbers.
The outcome is documented.
The decision-making should not be supplied by inference alone.
A Chronology Is Not Yet an Explanation
The consolidation sequence spans sixteen years, from 1974 to 1990.
It is tempting to treat those dates as a complete account of decline.
They are not.
The dates show when institutions combined.
They do not establish the size of each membership, the condition of its finances, the availability of premises or the alternatives discussed.
North Shore continued independently until the 1990 union, approximately thirty-five years after its charter.
Cardozo entered its first consolidation in 1975, approximately twenty years after its charter.
Those intervals are useful chronological distinctions.
They do not explain why the decisions were made.
Membership returns, minutes, accounts and consolidation resolutions are needed to develop that part of the story.
Whitestone and the Move to College Point
Harmony later met at the Whitestone Masonic Temple.
The beginning of that occupancy remains unresolved in the present research.
The author’s November 2026 account states that the building became reserved for the German Masonic District at the end of the Masonic year in June 2024.
Harmony and Cornucopia began meeting in the Anchor-Astoria temple in College Point that September under the same account.[5]
The present building also accommodates Anchor-Astoria and Francis Lewis.
That shared occupancy creates several historical connections.
King David once used a building also used by Astoria, now represented in Anchor-Astoria.
Harmony later used Whitestone’s temple; Whitestone’s institutional history belongs within Francis Lewis.
These are connections through premises, not additional consolidations.
Read Anchor-Astoria: Six Lodge Histories Across Queens →
Read Francis Lewis: The Number That Traveled East →
Read Cornucopia: One Charter, Many Connections →
What the Shared Rooms Reveal
The building references show that Harmony’s constituent institutions did not operate in isolation.
Advance’s temple, Castle Hall, Tadmor’s temple, Jamaica’s chapel and the later Whitestone premises supplied different settings for lodge work.
Some were ceremonial venues.
Some were regular meeting places.
The occupancy dates and legal arrangements were not necessarily the same.
Calling them all “borrowed rooms” would conceal those differences.
The evidence nevertheless supports a broader point: access to premises associated with other institutions was repeatedly important within this lineage.
Whether any constituent lodge owned a building remains a separate question.
The story does not need an unproven claim of universal tenancy to make shared space significant.
An Old Number and a New Name
Harmony’s present name dates from 1990.
Its number reaches back to 1851.
Between those dates are six constituent institutions, several communities and four consolidation events.
The number preserves one particularly visible continuity.
The name no longer lists the predecessor bodies.
Their histories remain part of the institution even when they are absent from its title.
That is what this lineage essay restores: not six active charters beneath one roof, but six histories brought into a continuing lodge.
The College Point room is their present setting.
It is not the beginning of the story, and it does not have to belong to the lodge for that story to continue.
Endnotes
1. Constituent Histories and Consolidations
The author’s Harmony series, “How Harmony Lodge No. 241 Inherited Six Lodges,” drawing on Grand Lodge of New York records compiled by Brete Murphy.
Supplies the charter references, name changes and consolidation sequence.
The six constituent histories are:
- Oscar Coles / Constitution.
- King David.
- Maspeth.
- Rufus King.
- North Shore.
- Cardozo.
Oscar Coles and Constitution are successive names of one institution, not two separate constituents.
2. Constitution and King David
The author’s Harmony series:
- “Constitution Lodge No. 241, From Broome Street to Queens.”
- “King David Lodge No. 994 and Masonic Astoria.”
Brooklyn Eagle, October 14, 1899, obituary of Oscar Coles.
The author’s Advance Masonic Temple research.
These materials support the early Manhattan account and King David’s meeting-place references.
Constitution’s arrival in Queens remains unresolved.
3. The May 1928 Constitution Ceremony
- Brooklyn Daily Times, May 17, 1928.
- Brooklyn Eagle, May 20, 1928.
Support the constitution of Maspeth, Rufus King and Suburban at Tadmor’s temple.
See Charles W. Froessel.
The common ceremonial venue is distinguished from the lodges’ later institutional affiliations.
4. Rufus King
The author’s Harmony series, “Rufus King Lodge No. 1091 and Civic Jamaica.”
Supports the Union Avenue meeting-place account and the individual affiliations discussed here.
Selected members’ occupations and names are not treated as a complete demographic profile.
5. Recent Meeting Places
Brete Murphy, November 2026 account.
Supplies the conclusion of the Whitestone arrangement in June 2024 and the September 2024 move to College Point.
Harmony’s first year at Whitestone remains unresolved.
6. North Shore, Cardozo and Property Questions
The author’s Grand Lodge compilation and research notes.
See Maspeth, North Shore and Cardozo.
North Shore’s early history requires further documentation.
Cardozo’s namesake is not established in the supplied material.
References to Hillside and Hollis require dated occupancy evidence.
The essay does not claim that none of Harmony’s constituents ever owned property.
7. Scope of the Essay
This essay distinguishes:
- A name change within one institution.
- The organization of separate lodges.
- Ceremonial venues.
- Regular meeting places.
- Property ownership.
- Formal consolidation.
The three-period framework is an editorial comparison of the constituent beginnings.
It is not evidence that all members followed the same residential path or that all consolidations had the same cause.
Direct clipping URLs were not supplied with the manuscript.
Questions for Further Research
- When did Constitution begin meeting in Queens?
- Where did it meet immediately before the 1974 consolidation?
- Where did Maspeth meet during its separate history?
- Who founded North Shore, and where did it meet?
- What records establish Cardozo’s namesake?
- When did Cardozo use Hillside and Hollis?
- When did Harmony begin meeting at Whitestone?
- Did any constituent lodge own a building?
- What do membership returns show at each consolidation?
- What reasons do the minutes and resolutions give for combining?
Continue Through the Harmony Series
- Harmony Lodge No. 241: Main History
- Maspeth, North Shore and Cardozo: Three Lodge Histories Behind Harmony
Follow the Connections
- The Thirteen Who Left Advance: Astoria’s Beginning
- Charles W. Froessel: From Tadmor’s East to the Grand East
- Tadmor: One Charter, Many Rooms
- Jamaica Lodge’s Rooms and Union Avenue Hall
- Connecting Stories Across the Queens District’s Seven Lodges
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