The Island City Masonic Temple in Long Island City: a lodge building on Jackson Avenue with stores underneath, an organ upstairs, and a federal courthouse as its tenant.
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The Island City Masonic Temple was planned as more than a meeting place. When the lodge laid its cornerstone on Jackson Avenue on September 8, 1906, the plans put stores on the ground floor and offices above them, with the lodge room on top and a bowling alley proposed for the basement.
Within thirty years the ground floor was rented to a federal courthouse. By 1938 the whole building was, and the lodge had moved out.
This is the story of that building: the rooms it replaced, what it held, how it came to house a court, and its later return to commercial use.
It belongs to One Lodge, Six Charters, the series on the six lodges behind Advance Service Mizpah Lodge No. 586, whose number came from Island City.
Forty Years of Borrowed Rooms
Island City Lodge No. 586 was chartered on June 18, 1866, and spent its first forty years in rooms it had not built.
The lodge first met in Hunters Point. Its own history lists a ferry-house, an office, and a carpenter’s shop among its early rooms. From 1867 it met in the upper story of Smithsonian Hall at Vernon Avenue and Third Street.
None of the sources in hand says why the lodge chose 1906 to build. The Brooklyn Eagle reported that Masonic circles across Long Island welcomed the news.
The temple went up on the south side of Jackson Avenue, between Pearson Street and the cross street the Eagle spelled Annabel and the lodge spells Anable, in what was known as the old City Hall block.
Its address at the time was 246 Jackson Avenue.
Long Island City had been an incorporated city from 1870 until 1898. The block’s name recalled that municipal life, and the Queens County Federal Court Building stood close by.
The cornerstone ceremony took place on September 8, 1906. Grand Master Townsend Scudder dedicated the completed temple on May 10, 1907.
The series map places the Jackson Avenue site alongside the other selected meeting places in the lineage.
Stores Below, a Lodge Room Above
The Eagle printed the plans in 1906, and they read like a business proposal with a lodge room on top.
The building was to 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. A bowling alley was proposed for the basement.
The cost was put at about $35,000, with possession hoped for by February 1907.
The arrangement offered rental space as well as rooms for the lodge. It suggests an intention to help carry the building’s costs through tenants, though the lodge’s books are not among the sources.
Later descriptions record a commercial rental on the first floor, a lodge room above, and a kitchen and bowling alley in the basement. The difference between the proposed and later floor arrangements is addressed in Note 1.
The firmest architectural description remains the Eagle’s: three stories of brick with a granite front.
The stores were part of the design from the beginning. The building was meant to serve people who entered from the sidewalk as well as members who went upstairs.
An Organ, a Glee Club, and a Bowling Alley
The lodge had the numbers to fill a substantial room.
Its history counts 1,283 members enrolled between 1866 and 1940, with about 500 still on the rolls that year, 107 of them life members.
An organ was installed in 1922.
Music runs through the clippings. In May 1925 a Mount Vernon lodge thanked Clarence Clark and his delegation of 88 brothers from Island City for a visit.
They brought an orchestra and glee club. The host lodge called it an evening long to be remembered.
A Brooklyn Times Union radio schedule for April 25, 1925, lists Island City Lodge twice that evening, at 6:00 and 6:50.
When Mount Vernon’s team prepared to return the visit that June, its notice told members to meet at the Masonic temple in Long Island City and take the Queensboro subway from Grand Central Station to Eleventh Street.
It reads like directions to a place people already expected to find.
The basement kitchen and bowling alley provided room for meals and recreation alongside the lodge’s formal work.
The lodge’s appetite for space also ran beyond the temple.
In June 1915 it bought the former Democratic clubhouse of Joseph Cassidy, once boss of the Queens County Democratic organization, at a foreclosure sale.
The plan was to make it a Masonic club open to all Master Masons in the city.
When the Court Needed Room
In 1934 the federal courthouse began renting the temple’s ground floor.
The Queens County Federal Court Building stood nearby, and the court needed room. By 1938 it was renting the entire building, and Island City had moved its meetings to the Mizpah Masonic Temple in Elmhurst.
The lodge was not moving among strangers.
Its own history records that it helped institute Mizpah Lodge in Newtown in 1873, presenting the new lodge with a Bible, Square and Compasses.
In 1938 the lodge that had helped start Mizpah moved into its temple.
Later papers kept Island City in Elmhurst. Obituaries in 1949 and 1974 describe the dead men as members of Island City Lodge of Elmhurst.
The geography article follows that move from the waterfront to Elmhurst and the branch’s eventual arrival in Astoria.
The Building Returns to the Street
The lodge eventually sold the entire building to the federal government.
At a later point the building became a commercial rental, with storefronts on Jackson Avenue.
The lodge’s institutional life continued elsewhere. Island City consolidated with Mizpah in 1987. The combined lodge joined Advance in Astoria in 1993, restoring No. 586 to the combined lodge’s title.
The Merger History follows those changes, while the Timeline places them alongside the temple’s cornerstone and dedication.
The Island City Masonic Temple was built for a lodge, rented to a court, sold to a government, and later rented again.
The 1906 plans put stores on the ground floor. Its later storefronts returned the building to a use that had been part of the design all along.
Sources and Notes
Newspaper Coverage of the Building
Brooklyn Eagle, September 8, 1906, p. 5, for the cornerstone report and building plans.
Lodge History
Island City Lodge, “Highlights in History of Island City,” 1941, for meeting places, the 1907 dedication, membership figures, and the lodge’s account of its participation in Mizpah’s institution in 1873.
Lodge Activities and Later Notices
Brooklyn Daily Times, June 23, 1915.
Brooklyn Times Union, April 25, 1925.
Brooklyn Times Union, February 9, 1936.
Mount Vernon Argus, May 25, 1925.
Patchogue Advance, January 13, 1949.
Daily Freeman, August 26, 1974.
[Before publication: add the exact source for the Mount Vernon return-visit notice.]
Lodge Records and Notes
Lodge records and notes concerning the 1922 organ and the federal courthouse’s rental of the ground floor in 1934 and the entire building in 1938.
[Before publication: identify the underlying records for these claims, complete the newspaper citations, and establish the property history and modern address.]
Note 1: Plans, Dates, Addresses, and Limits of the Record
The 1906 plans put the lodge room on the third floor, with stores below and offices on the second. Later descriptions put the lodge room on the second floor over a commercial first floor. The sources in hand do not establish whether the plans changed during construction or whether the later descriptions simplified the arrangement.
The reported $35,000 was the projected cost in the 1906 newspaper account. February 1907 was the hoped-for possession date, not the dedication date. The lodge history gives May 10, 1907, for the dedication.
A February 1936 newspaper notice places Island City at a temple on Whitney Avenue in Elmhurst, two years before the 1938 move given in the lodge notes. It suggests that some meetings may already have taken place in Elmhurst. The notice does not name Mizpah.
The lodge’s history gives February 24, 1873, for its part in instituting Mizpah. Mizpah’s own history places its dispensation on February 13 and its first meeting on February 27. These dates are retained as the sources give them, without treating them as interchangeable events.
The cross street appears as Annabel and Anable. Queens has renumbered addresses since 1906, and no modern equivalent of 246 Jackson Avenue is confirmed here. The precise site should be checked against historic maps and property records.
The architectural interpretation based on a photograph has been omitted because the photograph has not been identified or verified. The body retains the contemporary newspaper’s description of brick construction with a granite front.
The radio schedule names Island City Lodge but does not establish what was broadcast.
The clipping about the former Cassidy clubhouse does not identify its address.
The date of the sale to the federal government and the date of the building’s later return to commercial rental use are not established in the sources in hand.
The building’s survival, present address, and current use require confirmation before publication. The body describes the later commercial use recorded in the working material without identifying a current tenant.
The consolidations of 1987 and 1993 are given by year only, following the series convention.
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Related Reading
Island City Lodge No. 586 and the Laying of Its Cornerstone
Island City Lodge No. 586 and the Temple That Served the City
Mizpah Masonic Temple: The Watchtower at the Center of Queens
The Merger History of Advance Service Mizpah Lodge No. 586
Timeline of the Lodges That Formed Advance Service Mizpah Lodge No. 586
