Seven active lodges, generations of members and the earlier institutions whose histories they carry. Follow their lineages, explore their buildings and discover the people and acts of assistance that connected them.
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In Astoria, a working lodge room carries a connection to Woodhaven.
According to Advance Lodge’s records, its architectural firm supplied the same lodge-room blueprints previously used for Hillside’s temple. Tadmor’s history passes through both buildings: its later anniversary account places its beginnings in the Woodhaven temple, while its members now meet in the Astoria one.
In College Point, Cornucopia meets in Anchor-Astoria’s building. Anchor’s own history remembers a time when three Cornucopia brothers traveled from Flushing on Tuesday nights to help the young lodge continue its work.
These are not simply parallel histories.
They are connections between institutions whose present names tell only part of their stories.
This series follows the seven lodges that currently constitute the Queens District of the Grand Lodge of New York:
- Advance Service Mizpah No. 586.
- Tadmor No. 923.
- Anchor-Astoria No. 729.
- Francis Lewis No. 273.
- Cornucopia No. 563.
- Springfield Gardens No. 1057.
- Harmony No. 241.
The district defines the group. The historical connections carry the story beyond it.
Which Seven Lodges?
The series follows the seven current Queens District lodges backward through their constituent institutions, members, buildings and consolidations.
It is not a census of every active lodge with a Queens origin or every lodge currently meeting within the borough.
Some active lodges with Queens roots now belong to other districts. Their histories remain part of the wider Lodges That Built Queens project, but they are outside this seven-lodge group.
Three distinctions hold throughout:
- District affiliation identifies the administrative district to which a lodge belongs.
- Meeting location identifies where it assembles.
- Historical connection identifies where it or an earlier institution originated, met or developed.
Those places and affiliations do not always coincide.
A Queens District lodge may carry a Manhattan number. A lodge with Queens origins may now belong to another district. Several lodges can share a building without sharing either a district or an institutional lineage.
The articles follow those differences rather than folding them into a single geographical label.
More Than Seven Beginnings
The present names conceal earlier ones.
Francis Lewis carries Metropolitan’s Manhattan number and the histories of Whitestone, Bayside and Brandeis. Atwood belongs to its earlier parent connection.
Harmony combines histories once conducted under several names.
Springfield Gardens incorporates institutions founded in other southeast Queens neighborhoods. Anchor-Astoria’s line reaches beyond the two names retained in its title.
Advance Service Mizpah brings together several constituent histories beneath a number inherited through consolidation.
Tadmor and Cornucopia offer a different pattern. In the project’s supplied record, they continue without absorbing other lodge charters. Their connections emerge through meeting places, organizing work and assistance to neighboring lodges.
The seven are therefore not seven identical family trees.
Some branch through consolidation. Others connect outward through people and rooms.
Browse the Complete Series Guide →
Three Ways Into the Series
Follow One Lodge
Each lodge series traces an institutional line through its earlier lodges, members, meeting places and buildings.
Start with a familiar name, a neighborhood or a temple. The seven introductions below provide entry points; the complete guide lists the associated articles.
Choose a Lodge Series · Browse All Articles
Follow a Lineage Through Queens
The lineage essays ask a broader question:
What does this group of related institutions reveal about the growth and changing geography of Queens?
Founding dates establish a sequence. Meeting addresses, occupations, petitions and building projects give that sequence a local shape.
A rented room tells a different story from a purpose-built temple. A consolidation establishes an institutional change, but its causes require separate examination.
The essays bring those details together without assuming that every lodge followed the same path.
Find the Lineage Essays in the Series Guide →
Follow a Connecting Story
The connecting features cross the boundaries between the seven lodge series.
An engineer’s drawings link Woodhaven and Astoria. Founding members carry experience into a new lodge. Visiting brothers help another institution continue its work. Shared buildings bring separate histories under one roof.
These articles follow relationships that an individual lodge history cannot show on its own.
Some connections extend beyond the present district. The series follows them wherever the evidence leads.
Explore Connecting Stories Across the Queens District’s Seven Lodges →
The Seven Lodge Series
Advance Service Mizpah Lodge No. 586
A combined institutional history involving Advance, Island City, Mizpah, Service, City and Geba.
Its constituent stories reach through Manhattan and several Queens communities. The Advance Masonic Temple in Astoria provides a continuing physical center and a meeting place for other lodges.
The connecting stories follow the room plan supplied through Arthur E. Wenige, the members who helped organize Astoria Lodge and Edward J. Smith’s participation in Geba’s beginnings.
Begin With Advance Lodge No. 635 →
Explore Service Lodge No. 1009 · Explore City Lodge No. 408
Tadmor Lodge No. 923
A Ridgewood-centered history beginning with a new lodge working in borrowed space.
Its later temples became places where other lodges gathered and organized. Tadmor now meets in Advance’s Astoria temple, according to the author’s confirmation.
Its first Master, Edward J. Smith, and its later Master and Grand Master, Charles W. Froessel, connect the lodge with institutions across Queens.
Anchor-Astoria Lodge No. 729
The College Point line includes Anchor, Astoria and the later Queensboro consolidation.
Its temple also accommodates Cornucopia and Harmony under the author’s September 2024 meeting-place chronology.
The history includes assistance received by the young Anchor Lodge, Astoria’s beginnings in Advance’s building and the later institutions brought together through Queensboro.
Read Anchor-Astoria’s History →
Francis Lewis Lodge No. 273
The 273 Line begins with Atwood’s division and Metropolitan’s formation in Manhattan.
It follows Metropolitan, Whitestone, Bayside and Brandeis into the lodge now called Francis Lewis.
Companion building features examine the Whitestone and Bayside temples separately from the institutions that raised them.
Cornucopia Lodge No. 563
Flushing’s lodge began with assistance from other institutions and later supplied members, experience and rooms to neighboring lodges.
Its history follows the Northern Boulevard temple, the loss of that building and the continuing lodge’s later meeting arrangements.
Cornucopia began meeting in College Point in September 2024, according to the author’s confirmation. That present-day arrangement gives another setting to its much older relationship with Anchor.
Springfield Gardens Lodge No. 1057
A southeast Queens line incorporating Dunton, Council-Hillside and Jamaica-Queens Village.
Its constituent histories reach beyond the neighborhood retained in the present name.
Hillside’s room plan and Suburban’s constitution provide two different connections to the wider series. The lodge’s district affiliation, historical neighborhoods and meeting locations are followed as separate parts of the record.
Start the Springfield Gardens Series →
Harmony Lodge No. 241
A combined history involving Constitution, Maspeth, King David, Rufus King, North Shore and Cardozo.
Its constituent lodges supply stories of members, neighborhoods and changing meeting places.
Maspeth and Rufus King connect the line with Froessel’s district service. King David’s use of Castle Hall provides another relationship with Astoria Lodge’s history.
Harmony began meeting in College Point in September 2024, according to the author’s confirmation.
Begin With a Connection
The connecting articles can be read after an individual lodge series or as a way into the whole project.
The Engineer’s Room
Arthur E. Wenige’s firm connected Hillside’s Woodhaven temple with Advance’s Astoria lodge room.
Tadmor’s history passes through both buildings.
The connection follows drawings and meeting places, not a consolidation.
The Thirteen Who Left Advance
In 1919, thirteen Advance members helped organize Astoria Lodge No. 963.
The new lodge began in Advance’s building. Its later institutional line continued through Anchor-Astoria.
The story follows the founding group without assuming that departure alone explains their motives.
Read The Thirteen Who Left Advance →
The Tuesday Night Visitors
Anchor’s history remembers three Cornucopia brothers traveling to College Point to assist its early work.
Cornucopia now meets in Anchor-Astoria’s temple.
The relationship changed direction, though the later arrangement is not presented as a documented act of deliberate repayment.
Read The Tuesday Night Visitors →
Mr. Mason of Queens
Edward J. Smith, Tadmor’s first Master, participated in the beginnings of Geba, Astoria and Wakefield.
His story follows different duties on different evenings: accompanying a delegation, presenting a dispensation, installing officers and assisting at a constitution.
From Tadmor’s East to the Grand East
Charles W. Froessel became Grand Master of New York and a judge of the Court of Appeals.
His Queens Masonic work included assisting at the constitution of lodges whose histories now continue in Harmony and Springfield Gardens.
Explore All Connecting Stories →
Follow a Building
Buildings offer another route through the histories.
A temple can continue after the lodge that built it has consolidated. A room can accommodate several institutions without combining their charters. A former Masonic building can pass into another use while its architectural details remain.
These features follow the property and the rooms separately from the institutional line:
- The Whitestone Masonic Temple on 11th Avenue
- The Bayside Masonic Temple on Bell Boulevard
- The Hillside Masonic Temple in Woodhaven
- Advance’s Temple-Building Story
A shared address is the beginning of a question, not proof that every occupant shared the same institutional history.
How the History Is Handled
Grand Lodge records establish dates and institutional changes where available. Newspapers supply contemporary notices, reports, occupations, addresses and public occasions.
Anniversary books preserve later accounts, sometimes drawn from minutes that require separate examination.
Traditions are identified as traditions.
An announced event is not automatically treated as a completed one. A shared room is not a consolidation. A funeral venue is not necessarily a lodge’s meeting address.
A present directory entry does not reconstruct an entire occupancy history.
Where sources disagree, the disagreement remains visible.
The articles also identify information confirmed directly by the author, including recent meeting-place changes.
Living members are not named under the project’s editorial policy.
Queens remains the subject, but present district assignments are not imposed backward on the earlier record.
Beyond the Queens District
The Queens District provides the selection rule for this series, not the outer limit of Queens Masonic history.
Other active lodges have Queens origins or historical Queens meeting places while now belonging to different districts.
They remain part of the wider project.
So do institutions that ceased working without entering one of these seven lines.
The broader Lodges That Built Queens project also examines Prince Hall Masonry, the Odd Fellows, the Eastern Star, the Knights of Columbus and other fraternal, charitable, service and learned organizations.
Those histories require their own institutional frameworks and sources.
The seven-lodge series offers a defined route into the larger subject: how people organized themselves, obtained rooms, raised buildings, assisted neighbors and maintained institutions as their surroundings changed.
Explore The Lodges That Built Queens →
Where to Go Next
Choose the complete guide if you want to see the available articles in one place.
Choose the connecting stories if you want to follow relationships across the seven series.
Choose a lodge if a neighborhood, name or building has already caught your attention.
The project does not offer one uninterrupted story of growth or decline.
It follows decisions made in particular places: petitions signed, rooms furnished, land acquired, visitors welcomed and institutions combined.
Some of that history remains on cornerstones.
More survives in the records of the people who kept meeting.
Browse the Complete Series Guide →
Begin With the Connecting Stories →
Sources and Reading Guide
This introduction defines the series and directs readers to the individual articles. It does not replace their endnotes.
1. The Series Boundary
The selection of seven current Queens District lodges follows the author’s supplied project scope.
It is distinct from a list of every active lodge with Queens origins or every lodge currently meeting within the borough.
District assignments and meeting arrangements should be checked when the guide is updated.
2. Institutional Histories
Charter dates, constituent identities and consolidations follow the records identified in each lodge series.
A planned aggregate charter count will require a register distinguishing original warrants, parent-lodge relationships, renamed bodies and consolidations.
For an example of that research method, see The 273 Line: Research Dossier and Series Roadmap.
3. Lodge Records and Public Research Resources
The project uses Grand Lodge and constituent-lodge records as identified in the individual articles.
Public research entry points include:
- Grand Lodge of the State of New York
- Grand Lodge Lodge Locator
- Chancellor Robert R. Livingston Masonic Library
- Livingston Masonic Library Archival Finding Aids
These are research resources, not substitutes for the specific documents cited in each article.
Directory entries may require reconciliation with later changes confirmed by the author.
4. Recent Meeting-Place Changes
The author confirms that Cornucopia and Harmony ended their Whitestone meeting arrangements in June 2024 and began meeting in College Point that September.
The author also confirms Tadmor’s present use of Advance’s Astoria temple. Its arrival date remains under investigation.
Meeting location, district affiliation and property ownership are treated separately.
5. Connecting-Story Sources
Each connecting feature carries its own source notes:
- The Engineer’s Room
- The Thirteen Who Left Advance
- The Tuesday Night Visitors
- Edward J. Smith
- Charles W. Froessel
These notes distinguish contemporary reports, retrospective accounts, author confirmations and unresolved questions.
← The Lodges That Built Queens · Complete Series Guide · Connecting Stories →
