He tended Corona’s public school buildings, and when Advance Lodge built its temple, he was one of the men entrusted with its property.
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Joseph Gelson was Worshipful Master of Advance Lodge No. 635 in 1907, High Priest of Banner Chapter of Royal Arch Masons, and a trustee of the lodge on the November day in 1915 when its cornerstone was laid.
On weekdays he was the janitor-engineer associated with Public Schools 17 and 18 in Corona Heights, a man whose work was measured in boiler pressure and classroom doors. The lodge’s name turns up beside his in newspaper columns across some twelve years, and the entries add up to more than a membership.
Twenty Classrooms and One Alarm Box
Public School 17 at Corona Heights opened in January 1897 under Principal Josephine M. Lawlor. By 1905 a newspaper description of its routine gave the janitor a sentence of his own: Joseph Gelson supervised the cleaning and the heating of No. 17.
The sentence is plain, and it covers a great deal. A building full of children needs somebody who knows where every valve, door, and stair is, and for years that somebody was him.
Two afternoons show what the job could ask.
In September 1910, two small girls from the school fell through the rotten cover of a cesspool in a yard near the school. Neighbors heard screams and found a gaping hole under a grape arbor. The janitor of the school the girls had left two hours earlier lowered a ladder into the water and brought the first child out into daylight.
Two years later, on October 23, 1912, Miss Lawlor saw smoke rising from a frame house across Myrtle Avenue and told him to send an alarm from the box at the school. She then walked through all twenty classrooms and told the children to stay in their seats and sing.
No one panicked, and the firemen worked for half an hour. The newspapers praised the principal, as they should have. The man at the alarm box got a single clause.
“Wor. Joseph Gelson,” Astoria
According to information supplied by the lodge, Gelson had moved from Brooklyn to Astoria. His printed lodge record begins on January 2, 1904, in a newspaper list of officers elected and installed at Advance. Joseph Gelson is the chaplain.
He sat in the East as Worshipful Master in 1907. By May 1910 the Eagle was printing him as “Wor.” when he led a delegation from Advance to Commonwealth Lodge for a Master Mason degree.
By December 1914 the Times called him a Past Master of the lodge and High Priest of Banner Chapter, and reported that he danced every dance at Advance’s Ladies’ Night. He was married for the second time and had a family that included young sons.
His other memberships fill out the obituary that ran in 1922: Island City Chapter of the Eastern Star, St. Elmo Commandery of Knights Templar, and a council whose name the scan renders only as the “Universal Engineers of Craftsmen.”
Earlier Brooklyn notices may extend that fraternal record. A Joseph Gelson commanded Brooklyn Legion No. 15 of the Ancient Order of United Workmen in 1887, and a Brother Joseph Gelson sang at a gathering of the same order in Greenpoint two years later. The name is the same, but the available material does not establish that these notices concern Advance Lodge’s future Master.
Three Halls and a Club
One kind of entry recurs in the papers, and it has little to do with ritual.
In May 1905 Gelson was a director, a vice president, and a founder of the corporation behind the South Corona Taxpayers’ hall. In July of that year he was named a director of the Crown Hall Stock Company, incorporated to deal in real estate with a capital of $2,750 in shares of five dollars.
In January 1910 the Eagle and the Times listed him with John I. Lovell and Peter J. Guensch as a trustee of the new Advance Lodge Club, filed with the Secretary of State.
Taken one at a time, each is a modest piece of corporate paperwork. Taken together they show a man repeatedly named when a Queens community organized to own and maintain a meeting place.
The Stone on a November Saturday
Advance’s own roof arrived in 1915. The lodge had met in its rooms at 165 Fulton Avenue, and on November 20 it laid the cornerstone of a temple of its own.
The Eagle’s account of the day lists Gelson as a trustee of the lodge and as a member of the reception committee. The building committee portion of the report is too badly damaged to establish his precise place on it.
A month later the Times Union reported the annual meeting, at which he was elected a trustee for three years. That term ran through the dedication of the temple on November 14, 1916, and beyond it.
The record does not say what a school engineer contributed to the plans, and it would be a guess to say. What it establishes is his trusteeship during the building and opening of the lodge’s new home.
The larger story of that undertaking appears in A Cornerstone, a Dinner, and a Borough in a Hurry.
Seventy White Stars, Three Gold
On the afternoon of November 23, 1919, several hundred members and relatives gathered to muster out the lodge’s service flag, which carried seventy white stars and three gold.
Deputy Police Commissioner John Anderson Leach gave the main address, and Grand Secretary Robert Judson Kenworthy spoke for the Grand Lodge.
As the names of Frank Wohlleb, Frederick Ulrich, and Harry S. Heller were called and no one answered, a bell was tolled.
The speakers that day included, in the Times Union’s words, “Joseph Gelson, a chaplain of the lodge.” His own sons Joseph Jr. and William had served in the war, one in the army and one in the navy.
Retired at Seventy
In 1921 the Board of Education put into force a rule retiring its civilian employees at seventy, with an exemption for Civil War veterans. At a meeting that September it retired twenty-six of them. The Queens custodians on the list included Joseph Gelson of P.S. 17.
One Bronx engineer had already written that he would not go, since no one had complained of his work, and that he would take the board to court. Nothing in the clippings shows that Gelson contested his retirement.
On the evening of January 25, 1922, he died at his home at 25 Van Cleff Street, Corona, of pleurisy after a long illness, aged seventy-two. The Times noted that he had lived in Corona more than thirty-five years.
His will, reported in March, left his widow, Maude, $10,000 in real property and $100 in personal property.
The Work That Rarely Made News
The Board of Education retired Joseph Gelson by arithmetic, in a column of names printed under a headline about a pension fight, and a school on Corona Heights was left to learn the next man’s way with the furnace.
Advance Lodge kept a different record. His name had gone onto its trustees’ list as the cornerstone was laid, and it was on the program when the service flag came down.
The work of a trustee, like the work of an engineer, shows mainly when it fails. Much of Gelson’s work passed without a headline. What survives places him at the schoolhouse, at the lodge’s new temple, and before the families gathered to remember its wartime service.
Endnotes
Lodge Records
Advance Lodge No. 635 minute books and membership registers were not available for this article.
Gelson’s raising date and birthplace are not established here. His year as Worshipful Master, 1907, and his 1915 trusteeship are as supplied by the lodge’s own records. Additional lodge facts come from newspaper lists of officers, trustees, and committees.
The move from Brooklyn to Astoria is as supplied by the lodge; its precise date is not established in this article.
Newspapers
- Brooklyn Daily Times, January 2, 1904, lodge officers.
- Brooklyn Daily Times, March 25, 1905, Public School 17.
- Brooklyn Daily Times, May 31, 1905, South Corona Taxpayers’ hall corporation.
- Brooklyn Daily Times, September 16, 1910, cesspool rescue.
- Brooklyn Daily Times, November 25, 1911.
- Brooklyn Daily Times, October 24, 1912, school fire alarm.
- Brooklyn Daily Times, January 10, 1913, Public School 17.
- Brooklyn Daily Times, December 3, 1914, Ladies’ Night and fraternal offices.
- Brooklyn Daily Times, January 28, 1922, obituary.
- Brooklyn Daily Times, March 29, 1922, will.
- Brooklyn Eagle, January 8, 1910, Advance Lodge Club.
- Brooklyn Eagle, May 26, 1910, Commonwealth Lodge visit.
- Brooklyn Eagle, November 21, 1915, cornerstone ceremony.
- Brooklyn Eagle, September 8, 1921, retirements.
- Brooklyn Times Union, July 6, 1905, Crown Hall Stock Company.
- Brooklyn Times Union, December 24, 1915, annual meeting; the report misprints the lodge as No. 586.
- Brooklyn Times Union, November 24, 1919, service flag ceremony.
- Brooklyn Times Union, September 8, 1921, retirements.
- The Brooklyn Citizen, January 6, 1887; November 3, 1889; January 3, 1915.
Public and Genealogical Records
Public and genealogical records were not consulted directly. Age, residence, family, and will details come from the newspaper items above.
Note on the Record
The clippings are optical-character scans with heavy damage. The packet also contained two machine-cleaned transcriptions, which were not treated as independent sources.
The 1887 and 1889 Brooklyn items name a Joseph Gelson who may or may not be the man who later served as Master of Advance Lodge.
The will date is garbled.
The building committee list in the Eagle’s cornerstone report is too damaged to establish Gelson’s precise place on it. His trusteeship and reception committee membership are reported separately.
The original draft’s description of Gelson as being in his late sixties in 1914 has been omitted because it does not align with the reported age of seventy-two at his death in January 1922.
Continue Reading
- Advance Lodge No. 635: Lodge History — Explore the lodge Gelson led in 1907 and the temple he helped oversee as a trustee.
- John I. Lovell of Advance Lodge No. 635 — Another trustee named alongside Gelson in the Advance Lodge Club.
- Brother John Anderson Leach of Advance Lodge No. 635 — The deputy police commissioner who addressed the lodge’s 1919 service flag ceremony.
- A Cornerstone, a Dinner, and a Borough in a Hurry — Continue into the story of Advance Lodge’s Grand Avenue home.
- The Lodges That Built Queens: Start Here — Explore the full series.
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