John I. Lovell and Advance Lodge No. 635: The Mason Who Helped Build the Temple

A Long Island City tradesman, his son, and the years when an Astoria lodge set out to build a home of its own

Two Lovells sat on the rolls of Advance Lodge No. 635: John Isaac Lovell, who joined in 1903, and his son, John Milton Lovell, who followed in 1923. The father's name, though, keeps surfacing in places that go well beyond a membership list. It turns up on the paperwork that gave the lodge legal footing for a building of its own, on the committee that oversaw that building, and on a mortgage tied to the Grand Avenue plot where the temple would stand. Some members attend. Others get entangled, in the best sense, with the work itself. (1, 2, 5, 8, 10)

Number 287

The lodge's records place him as the 287th man to sign on. He was twenty-nine, born in America, living at 100 Camelia Street, and the occupation written beside his name was simple: mason. On May 6, 1903, he was raised to the degree of Master Mason. (1)

Advance Lodge was already thirty-six years old by then. It had been chartered on July 3, 1867, and named for the brig Advance, which sailed from New York in 1851 to search for Sir John Franklin's lost polar expedition. A lodge named for a ship sent into the unknown had a certain nerve built into it. New members were joining an outfit with a past, and, as it turned out, a project ahead. (10)

The Deacon's Corner

Lovell did not wait long to be given something to do. After the lodge's December 1903 election, he was appointed Junior Deacon, and the Brooklyn papers printed his name among the appointed officers in early January 1904. The post is not a glamorous one, but it is a working one, tied to the movement and order of the lodge room. Eight months after being raised, he was already part of the machinery. (3, 4)

Then the record goes quiet for several years. A man can be useful long before a newspaper has any reason to say so.

Three Names Under the Benevolent Order Law

In January 1910, the story picks up with real momentum. Advance Lodge, the Eagle reported, was planning one of the finest temples on Long Island. A plot fronting Grand Avenue, near Van Alst Avenue, had been secured within the past month, and plans were being drawn. The projected cost was about $40,000. (5, 6)

At that week's meeting, the members elected three trustees under the benevolent order law, charged with taking title and erecting the building. John I. Lovell was one of them, alongside Peter J. Guensch and Joseph Gelson. A separate dispatch from Albany reported that Advance Lodge had been organized with the Secretary of State, and the same three names appeared as its trustees. (5, 7)

Those are the lines of a lodge deciding who it trusts with its property and its ambitions, and Lovell was among the three.

The Long Middle

Buildings rarely follow the schedule announced in a newspaper. The 1910 coverage expected construction to begin in the spring. The cornerstone was not laid until November 1915, and by then the price quoted in the press had shrunk considerably. The Eagle's headline that month spoke of $18,000, while its text put the cost at about $15,000, a long way from the $40,000 of 1910. The papers do not reconcile the figures. An estimate for a building that exists only on paper and a number quoted with the stone about to be set are often different creatures. (5, 10)

What the record does show is Lovell's name turning up as the project moved toward its working phase. By 1915, he was serving on the Building Committee, a group chaired by Joseph Gelson that also included Christopher J. Stockton, Henry O. Grieshaber, John W. Owen, Charles F. Bales, and John A. Leach. (10)

Paper, Mortgage, and Mortar

In October 1915, the Brooklyn Daily Times carried two small notices that are easy to skim past. One, in the mortgage listings, recorded a $15,000 mortgage from Advance Lodge No. 635 to John I. Lovell on the Grand Avenue plot, forty feet by one hundred forty-two. The other, a few days later, noted the same mortgage in a roundup of Queens building activity, adding that the money would be used to create a Masonic Temple. (8, 9)

The notices do not spell out how the arrangement worked, and it would be a mistake to guess. What they establish is that, as the temple moved from plan to construction, the financial structure behind the project was tied to Lovell's name. Trustee, builder of committees, party to the mortgage: the pattern is hard to miss, though no single document announces it.

A Saturday on Grand Avenue

The cornerstone ceremony came in November 1915. About three hundred Masons, members of Advance Lodge and of other Queens lodges, formed up at the lodge's rooms at Main Street and Fulton Avenue. A band from Mecca Temple led the way, with Knights Templar from York, St. Elmo, and Columbian Commanderies in full uniform behind it. The Masons in the line wore the traditional white apron. Several thousand spectators followed the procession down Main Street, over to Newtown Avenue, along Crescent Street, and onto Grand Avenue. (10)

At the site, Most Worshipful George Freifeld, Grand Master of Masons in the State of New York, led the ritual with the officers of the Grand Lodge. Henry Martin read the history of Advance Lodge, and Henry C. Johnson delivered the oration. The building going up behind them was to be two stories of brick and stone, meant for Masonic purposes only. (10)

Lovell's name appears twice in the Eagle's account that weekend. He is listed on the Reception Committee for the exercises, and again, as John Lovell, among those on the Building Committee. On a day when a few thousand people lined a street to watch a lodge lay a stone, the men on those committees were the ones who had made sure there was something to lay it on. (10)

Hands That Knew the Work

The trade appears in the records, too, and it rewards a second look. When Lovell joined, the lodge listed him as a mason. In the 1920 census, with the temple standing, he was in Queens and recorded as a bricklayer, forty-six years old, born in New York to English-born parents. His household that year included his wife, Helen, a daughter, also Helen, and a son, John. (1, 11)

That son, John M. Lovell, joined Advance Lodge in 1923 and was listed as a lineman. One generation laid brick; the next strung wire. Whether the elder Lovell's trade bore directly on the temple, the records do not say, and it would be unfair to claim more than they do. But a man who worked with brick and mortar for a living, and spent years on the trustee and building committee work behind a brick-and-stone temple, left an overlap that is hard to ignore. It is the sort of coincidence a lodge with a taste for symbol would not have needed to invent. (2, 5, 10, 11)

Genealogical records point to roots in Queens and Long Island City. They name his parents as Joseph Benjamin Lovell and Hannah Powell, both English-born, and his wife as Helen Gertrude Aurora Lovell, née Gusterson. He was likely born on November 17, 1873. (13)

What the Rolls Keep

John Isaac Lovell died in Queens on July 21, 1934, at about sixty years of age. By then, the temple on Grand Avenue had been standing for nearly two decades, and the son he had sponsored into the same lodge was an established member. (2, 10, 12)

Lodge histories tend to remember presiding officers, and for good reason. But much of what makes a lodge more than a club is carried out by men whose names show up in the smaller type: the deacon, the trustee, the committee member, the signature on the mortgage. John I. Lovell was one of those men, in the years when Advance Lodge No. 635 stopped renting its rooms and began building its own.

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Endnotes

Lodge Records

1. Advance Lodge No. 635 membership records: John I. Lovell, 287th member, age 29, born in America, residing at 100 Camelia Street, occupation mason; raised to Master Mason May 6, 1903.

2. Advance Lodge No. 635 membership records: John Milton Lovell, joined 1923, listed as a lineman.

Newspapers

3. The Brooklyn Daily Times, January 2, 1904, “Officers Elected” (Advance Lodge election of December 29, 1903; John I. Lovell, Junior Deacon).

4. The Brooklyn Daily Times, January 9, 1904, “Masonic” (Advance Lodge election and officers).

5. Brooklyn Eagle, January 8, 1910, “To Build $40,000 Temple” (plot on Grand Avenue; election of three trustees).

6. The Brooklyn Daily Times, January 8, 1910, “$40,000 Temple” (projected cost; trustees elected).

7. Brooklyn Eagle, January 8, 1910, “Advance Lodge No. 635” (organization with the Secretary of State; trustees John I. Lovell, Peter J. Guensch, and Joseph Gelson).

8. The Brooklyn Daily Times, October 23, 1915, “Queens Borough: Mortgages” ($15,000 mortgage, Advance Lodge No. 635 to John I. Lovell).

9. The Brooklyn Daily Times, October 25, 1915, “Queens Operations” (same mortgage; purpose stated as creating a Masonic Temple).

10. Brooklyn Eagle, November 21, 1915, “Lay Cornerstone for Masonic Temple” (cornerstone ceremony; Reception and Building Committee lists; lodge history and building description).

Census and Vital Records

11. United States Census, 1920, Queens, New York City (John Lovell, age 46, occupation bricklayer; household of wife Helen, daughter Helen, and son John).

12. New York, New York City Municipal Deaths, 1795–1949, FamilySearch: John Isaac Lovell, died July 21, 1934, Queens, New York; certificate number 4843.

Genealogical and Public Records

13. Genealogical records (MyHeritage, FamilySearch, and related public family trees) for John Isaac Lovell, including birth on November 17, 1873, in New York; marriage to Helen Gertrude Aurora Lovell, née Gusterson; and parents Joseph Benjamin Lovell and Hannah Powell.