The Mizpah Lodge No. 738 cornerstone was set on New Year’s Day, 1920, for a temple that several Queens lodges were expected to share.
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Most people start the year slowly. On January 1, 1920, at half past two in the afternoon, the Masons of Elmhurst were due at the corner of Warner Avenue and Ketchum Place to lay a cornerstone.
The Mizpah Lodge No. 738 cornerstone was the public beginning of a building the lodge had waited years to start. The concrete foundation was finished, and work on the first story was to begin the following week. The lodge had owned the site since 1916.
Why Mizpah Built When It Did
Mizpah Lodge No. 738 had been looking for a home since 1873, when it began in a lawyer’s office and moved within weeks to the top floor of a building on Broadway.
In 1905 it moved to Arcanum Hall, still on Broadway. By then Newtown had been part of New York City for seven years and was known by its post office name, Elmhurst.
The lodge bought a site in 1916 for $6,000. Building started in 1919. The sources in hand do not explain the three years between purchase and construction.
The Brooklyn Daily Times, announcing the ceremony, noted that an earlier Masonic lodge had been instituted in old Newtown more than a hundred years before, and that Mizpah had been instituted there in 1873.
Its first Master, Garret J. Garretson, a resident of Elmhurst, was one of the organizers named in the announcement.
What Was Announced
The Times of December 31, 1919, headed its piece “Elmhurst Plans Big Masonic Day.” It said Deputy Grand Master Robert H. Robinson of the State of New York would lay the stone “with appropriate ceremonies.”
The lodge’s centennial history agrees that Robinson laid it, acting as Grand Master.
The Times expected several lodges to send delegations: Mizpah and Geba of Elmhurst, Forest Hills, Cornucopia of Flushing, Anchor of College Point, Richmond Hill, and Advance and Island City of Long Island City.
One of the principal speakers was to be Judge Townsend Scudder, a past Grand Master. Joseph N. Wickham, a doctor, a past District Deputy, and a past master of Mizpah, chaired the arrangements committee.
The building they were gathering for was to occupy the northeast corner, with seventy feet on Warner Avenue and a depth of a hundred feet.
It was to be red brick, three stories above a basement, at a cost of $100,000, built by the Woodruff Construction Company of Long Island City.
The first floor was an auditorium for more than five hundred people. The lodge room went on the second floor, a dining room on the third, and, in the basement, bowling alleys.
The paper expected Mizpah, Geba, Forest Hills Lodge, Mizpah’s Star Chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star, and a commandery to move in.
The People
Robinson had been at this kind of ceremony before. At the Advance Lodge cornerstone ceremony in November 1915, he stood as Grand Marshal, and Wickham was listed as Deputy Grand Master.
Scudder had been Grand Master when Island City laid its cornerstone in 1906, and he dedicated Advance’s temple in 1916.
The Mizpah ceremony drew on the same circle of Grand Lodge officers who appear at the earlier ceremonies in this series, with the local difference that Wickham belonged to the host lodge.
The sources in hand are the announcement, the lodge’s centennial history, and the surviving object record. They establish the occasion without supplying a full account of the afternoon.
The Trowel
One object from the day survives.
The Chancellor Robert R. Livingston Masonic Library holds a trowel, catalog number T6inv-256, which its record describes as a trowel presented to R.W. Robert H. Robinson at the laying of the cornerstone of Mizpah Lodge No. 738.
The record dates it to January 1, 1920, and lists its materials as silver and ebony, each with a question mark. The credit line names Mrs. Robert H. Robinson.
The catalog preserves the recipient’s name and the occasion. It does not describe the presentation.
What Followed
As the building went up, the lodge needed more money. It held a bazaar in the unfinished temple with Mizpah’s Star Chapter No. 484, Order of the Eastern Star, to help pay for it.
By October 1920 the Times could report a week-long bazaar and carnival under way at what it called the new $200,000 temple, four stories of marble and brick. The paper noted that this was the first public inspection.
Robinson, now Grand Master, opened it on the Saturday evening.
The temple was dedicated on March 17, 1921, with the entire Grand Lodge staff present. It stands at 87-11 Whitney Avenue, the renamed Warner Avenue, and was later sold to a church.
The building’s longer history continues in Mizpah Masonic Temple: The Watchtower at the Center of Queens.
The Mizpah Lodge No. 738 cornerstone survives in the record through an announcement, a lodge history, and a trowel bearing the occasion’s association. That is enough to place it.
The lodge that met in a law office in 1873 laid the cornerstone of its own building in 1920, with the Deputy Grand Master of the state presiding.
Sources and Notes
Newspapers
- Brooklyn Daily Times, December 31, 1919, p. 9, “Elmhurst Plans Big Masonic Day.”
- Brooklyn Daily Times, October 25, 1920, p. 7.
- Brooklyn Eagle, November 21, 1915, for the Grand Lodge officers at Advance Lodge’s cornerstone ceremony.
Lodge History
- Mizpah Lodge centennial history, “Lodge History,” 1973; author and exact date to be confirmed.
Object Record
- Chancellor Robert R. Livingston Masonic Library, object record for the Mizpah Lodge No. 738 cornerstone trowel, catalog number T6inv-256.
[Before publication: add the exact catalog reference or verified object-record URL and complete the bibliographic details for the centennial history.]
Note 1: Dates, Names, Figures, and Limits of the Record
The Times announced the cornerstone ceremony for the afternoon of January 1, 1920. The centennial history gives the same date.
The Times of December 31 gives the cost as $100,000 and the building as three stories above a basement. Its October 1920 report gives $200,000 and four stories. The centennial history gives no size or cost. The sources do not establish whether the later story count includes the basement or explain the difference in reported cost.
The streets are Warner Avenue and Ketchum Place in the 1919 and 1920 reports, with Ketcham used in one account. Warner Avenue was soon renamed Whitney Avenue, and the address is 87-11 Whitney Avenue.
The centennial history spells the Grand Master’s name Robertson. This article uses Robinson.
The Times calls Garret J. Garretson a former Supreme Court justice. No other source in hand confirms that description, and it is not used in the body.
The earlier Island City cornerstone accounts disagree on who performed the laying of its stone in 1906. A programme assigned the act to Grand Master Townsend Scudder, while Island City’s later history credits Grand Secretary Edward M. L. Ehlers acting in his place. This article therefore identifies Scudder as Grand Master at the time without asserting that he personally laid that stone.
Wickham’s office also differs across the working sources: the 1915 Advance report lists him as Deputy Grand Master, while Mizpah’s centennial history describes his district office. Those titles should be checked against Grand Lodge records.
The announcement and centennial history do not establish whether Scudder delivered his planned address, how many people attended, what the weather was, or the individual acts of the ritual.
The trowel record lists silver and ebony as possible materials, each with a question mark. It also carries a second date, “circa 1901,” which is unexplained.
Interpretive claims in an earlier draft about how the trowel was received and what the presentation signified are omitted. The catalog record establishes the association with Robinson and the cornerstone occasion, not a narrative of the presentation.
Start Here · Series Hub · Timeline · Previous Article: Island City Temple · Next Article: Mizpah Temple · Related Directory: Mizpah Members · Related Member Profiles: To Be Assigned
Related Reading
- Mizpah’s Watchtower in Old Newtown: The Story of Mizpah Lodge No. 738
- Mizpah Masonic Temple: The Watchtower at the Center of Queens
- Advance Lodge No. 635 and the Laying of Its Cornerstone
- Island City Lodge No. 586 and the Laying of Its Cornerstone
- Geba Lodge No. 954
- Series Hub: Advance Service Mizpah Lodge No. 586
