The Island City Lodge No. 586 cornerstone, September 8, 1906: how a lodge that began on planks laid across boxes laid the first stone of its own temple.
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The Island City Lodge No. 586 cornerstone ceremony began indoors.
On Saturday afternoon, September 8, 1906, the Grand Lodge of New York assembled in the old lodge room in Smithsonian Hall, at Vernon Avenue and Third Street in Long Island City, and opened its proceedings there.
Then a procession formed and walked to the site of the proposed temple on the south side of Jackson Avenue, in what people called the old City Hall block.
The Brooklyn Eagle headlined the afternoon as a cornerstone laying with simple ceremony. Grand Master Townsend Scudder had suggested that display be dropped, and it was.
Several hundred Masons came. One lodge was invited to attend as a body: Advance, of Astoria.
The newspaper recorded the program, named officers and committee members, and described the building they expected to put up.
This article follows the afternoon as far as the sources carry it, and then the temple it started. It belongs to One Lodge, Six Charters, which traces the six lodges now joined in Advance Service Mizpah Lodge No. 586.
Island City supplied the number.
From the Ferry-House to the Old City Hall Block
The lodge had spent forty years in rooms it had not built.
According to its history, the founders met in an upper room of the old ferry-house at the foot of Borden Avenue, then in an office, then in a carpenter’s shop on Vernon Avenue.
The early furniture, in some cases, was planks laid across boxes.
In 1867, when Smithsonian Hall went up at Vernon Avenue and Third Street, the lodge took the upper story. It stayed there until the new temple opened in May 1907.
The temple would stand on the south side of Jackson Avenue, between Pearson Street and the cross street the Eagle spelled Annabel and the lodge’s own history spells Anable.
The Eagle called the block the old City Hall block.
Long Island City was an incorporated city from 1870 until it was folded into Greater New York in 1898, which accounts for the name.
The geography article follows the waterfront communities in which the lodge began. The series map places the Jackson Avenue temple among the lineage’s selected meeting places.
A Public Ceremony, Kept Plain
A cornerstone ceremony is a public rite marking the beginning of a building.
In the Masonic ceremonies described in this series, the Grand Lodge, the statewide governing body, supplied officers, and local lodges joined the occasion.
The buildings were not always Masonic ones.
Island City’s own history lists its participation in ceremonies for the foundation stone of the obelisk in Central Park in 1880, the Masonic Home, and a temple at Greenport.
The Eagle printed the order of the September 1906 afternoon.
The Grand Lodge assembled. The Grand Chaplain offered a prayer, and an ode was sung.
The Grand Secretary read the list of articles to be placed in the stone, and the Grand Treasurer deposited them.
After music came the laying of the stone, more music, a consecration, a proclamation by the Grand Marshal, a second ode, and a benediction.
The clipping does not identify what went into the stone.
The Eagle counted several hundred Masons from across Long Island and New York, among them officers of the Grand Lodge.
Advance Lodge No. 635, of Astoria, was the only lodge invited to attend in a body.
Island City had a history with Advance. Its records show that on July 16, 1866, the lodge consented to a Brother Clark’s request to form Advance Lodge at Astoria under dispensation.
In 1906 Advance was a neighbor whose own temple was still ten years away.
The Master of Island City was Alexander M. Simpson. The Senior Warden, Frederick G. DeWitt, would be Master by the time the building was dedicated.
Frank E. Haff, treasurer, had served as District Deputy Grand Master for the First Masonic District in 1900 and 1901. Sherman B. Richart was secretary.
Charles A. Tipling, a referee in bankruptcy for Queens, was the lodge historian. He went through the records for the occasion to write a history of Masonry on Long Island from 1807 to 1865.
The Eagle said it interested old-time Masons.
A twelve-member building committee had charge of the project. A subcommittee of five handled the day itself: Haff, DeWitt, William C. Koehler, Raymond J. Taylor, and Simpson.
When the ceremony was over, the lodge and its guests went back to Smithsonian Hall for a banquet.
Stores Below and a Lodge Room Above
The Eagle printed the plans, and they read like a business proposal with a lodge room on top.
The building would have three stories, brick with a granite front, fifty feet on Jackson Avenue and ninety-seven feet deep.
Stores would occupy the ground floor. Offices on the second floor were to be fitted up as first-class.
The lodge room would be on the third floor, measuring 64 by 38 feet, with anterooms, cloakrooms, lockers, and a library.
The basement was proposed as a bowling alley.
The cost was put at about $35,000, and the lodge expected to take possession by February of the following year.
Putting stores and offices beneath the lodge room suggests that rents were intended to help carry the building. The sources do not state that purpose directly.
The Island City Masonic Temple article follows the plans, the building’s social uses, and its later tenants.
The City the Founders Expected
Island City’s own history is blunt about where it started.
In 1865, it says, Hunters Point held scarcely three thousand people, with unpaved and unlighted streets, few churches of any kind, and practically no fraternal or social life.
Seventeen Master Masons signed an agreement at the old ferry-house on May 2 of that year to form a lodge there.
The name carried a hope.
According to the account Thomas H. Snedeker later gave the lodge, the charter members chose Island City expecting that the State’s charter for Long Island City would make Island City the municipality’s name.
It never did.
By 1906 the lodge was laying a cornerstone for a three-story building with stores on its ground floor, in a block named for a city hall.
In between, the community had incorporated, had its city hall, and in 1898 had given up its separate existence to Greater New York.
The temple was neither small nor tucked away. The ceremony placed the lodge on a street where its building would be part of the neighborhood’s daily business.
From the New Temple to Elmhurst
The temple was completed in 1907.
On May 10 Grand Master Townsend Scudder dedicated it, with Frederick G. DeWitt, the Senior Warden of cornerstone day, now Master.
The lodge moved in that May, after forty years upstairs in Smithsonian Hall.
An organ was installed in 1922.
A 1925 Mount Vernon notice directed visiting members to the Masonic temple in Long Island City by way of the Queensboro subway to Eleventh Street.
The temple was drawing visitors from well outside the neighborhood.
In 1934 the federal courthouse began renting the ground floor. In 1938 it rented the entire building, and Island City moved its meetings to Mizpah’s temple in Elmhurst.
The lodge eventually sold the building to the federal government. It later returned to commercial rental use.
The lodge-history article follows Island City through its Elmhurst years.
In 1987 Island City consolidated with Mizpah. In 1993 the combined lodge joined Advance in Astoria, and No. 586 returned to use.
The Merger History and Timeline follow those changes.
The cornerstone account rests on a newspaper column and a lodge history written thirty-five years after the day. Neither identifies what was sealed inside the stone.
Advance, the only guest lodge invited to attend in a body, laid its own cornerstone on November 20, 1915, just over nine years later. In 1993 the branches joined in Astoria, where Island City’s number became the combined lodge’s own.
Sources and Notes
Contemporary Newspaper Report
Brooklyn Eagle, September 8, 1906, p. 5, for the cornerstone account, printed program, building plans, and committee lists.
Lodge History
Island City Lodge, “Highlights in History of Island City,” prepared for the lodge’s seventy-fifth anniversary in 1941.
Visiting Lodge Coverage
Mount Vernon Argus, May 25, 1925, p. 6, for the notice concerning Hiawatha Lodge’s visits to Island City.
Grand Lodge Records
Grand Lodge of New York records for charter dates and lodge numbers.
[Before publication: add the proceedings volumes and page references, verify the date and retrospective or prospective wording of the cornerstone report, and identify the underlying sources for the organ and federal court tenancy.]
Note 1: Dates, Officers, Plans, and Limits of the Record
The lodge’s 1941 history dates its dispensation to June 18, 1865, and its charter and consecration to June 18, 1866. The series uses June 18, 1866, as the charter date, following Grand Lodge records.
The Eagle describes cornerstone day as the lodge’s fortieth anniversary. That fits the charter year but not the exact charter date.
The accounts differ on who laid the stone. The Eagle’s printed program lists Grand Master Townsend Scudder. The 1941 lodge history credits Grand Secretary Edward M. L. Ehlers acting as Grand Master. The article does not choose between them.
Scudder’s role in requesting a plain ceremony is reported by the Eagle. His participation in the occasion should not be read as membership in Island City or another of the six constituent lodges. He belonged to Glen Cove Lodge No. 580.
The program records the reading and deposit of articles in the cornerstone, but the sources used here do not identify those articles.
The cross street appears as Annabel in the newspaper and Anable in lodge material. The precise historic site and its modern address require confirmation against maps and property records.
The 1906 plans place the lodge room on the third floor, above stores and second-floor offices. Later descriptions put it on the second floor and add a basement kitchen. The available sources do not explain the difference.
The projected $35,000 cost and hoped-for February 1907 possession date are the figures reported in the 1906 plans. The dedication took place on May 10, 1907.
The explanation of the name Island City is attributed to Thomas H. Snedeker’s later account, as preserved in the lodge history. It is not presented as a surviving statement from the founders in 1865.
The packet’s Mount Vernon citation is dated May 25, 1925, while the draft describes arrangements for a June visit. The exact notice and the date of the return visit should be checked before publication.
The temple article notes a February 1936 report placing Island City at a temple on Whitney Avenue in Elmhurst. That may indicate some meetings there before the full-building court tenancy in 1938. The notice does not name Mizpah.
The date of the sale to the federal government and the beginning of later commercial rental use are not established here. The building’s present address and current use also require confirmation.
The consolidations of 1987 and 1993 are given by year only.
Start Here · Series Hub · Timeline · Previous Article: To Be Assigned · Next Article: To Be Assigned · Related Directory: Island City Members · Related Member Profiles: To Be Assigned
Related Reading
Island City Lodge No. 586 and the Temple That Served the City
The Island City Masonic Temple: A Building That Served a Growing Borough
The Merger History of Advance Service Mizpah Lodge No. 586
Timeline of the Lodges That Formed Advance Service Mizpah Lodge No. 586
Advance Lodge No. 635 and the Laying of Its Cornerstone
How This Series Is Researched: Sources for Queens Lodge History
