Queens History and Freemasonry / Active Lodges of Queens / Anchor-Astoria Series
Part 3 of the Anchor-Astoria Lodge series · A building history for Freemason Buildings of Queens
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In 1915, about 150 Masons each turned a spadeful of Richmond Hill earth. Nine months later, their temple was dedicated. Its auditorium below and lodge room above gave the building a public life as well as a fraternal one.
November 10, 2026 · By Brete Murphy
A Hundred and Fifty Spades
On Saturday afternoon, June 5, 1915, the members of Richmond Hill Lodge No. 892 opened a special meeting in their rented rooms at Arcanum Hall.
Then they called a recess.
They walked to an empty lot just north of Jamaica Avenue, where about 150 men formed a circle.
Each held a spade.
At a signal, they turned the earth together.
Isaac N. Fallor, a former district deputy, delivered a historical address. The Rev. W. A. Wagner of Union Congregational Church, standing in for the lodge chaplain, offered a prayer.
According to the contemporary reports, foundation digging began that afternoon.
The lodge was four years old.
It had wanted a temple since its first weeks.
An Eastern Star Lot
When the new Richmond Hill lodge was organizing in the spring of 1911, the Daily Long Island Democrat reported that one of its first projects would be a handsome temple.
The proposed site was on Elm Street near Jamaica Avenue.
The local Eastern Star chapter had acquired it for a hall of its own.
Plans already called for a two-story building with a lodge room upstairs and a banquet hall below.
The temple did not immediately follow.
In March 1913, newspapers reported that the lodge had resolved to buy the chapter’s plot, then described as 35 feet wide.
Finding it too narrow, the lodge negotiated with the Kew Gardens Corporation for an adjoining strip 25 feet wide.
Together, the purchases would provide a 60-foot frontage.
The property adjoined the home of Dr. L. Howard Moss, a physician and a leading participant in the building campaign.
It faced St. John’s English Evangelical Lutheran Church and Public School No. 56.
A fifteen-member ways and means committee was appointed, with Moss as chairman.
The Work Behind the Site
The Eastern Star chapter’s role deserves attention.
The site did not begin as an empty opportunity discovered by the men organizing a lodge. Another organization had already acquired ground for its own proposed hall.
Later reports described the lodge as owning the enlarged property free and clear.
The transaction should not be called a donation without the conveyance or financial terms. What the accounts establish is that the chapter’s earlier property became part of the lodge’s building project.
Women’s work continued after the site changed hands.
A ladies’ auxiliary organized in February 1914 for the stated purpose of furnishing the proposed temple.
The building campaign depended on people who were not members of the lodge itself.
The Parada
Richmond Hill Lodge raised money through events, subscriptions and borrowing.
Its public calendar also made the institution visible before the building existed.
In February 1914, it took 127 guests to a George Washington dinner at Autenrieth’s Inn in Forest Hills, carrying them by stage from Jamaica Avenue.
In April, United States Secretary of Commerce William C. Redfield delivered the historical lecture at a Master Mason degree.
The major theatrical effort came that December.
For four nights, the lodge presented a musical spectacle called the “Parada” at Columbia Hall.
Reports described a cast of two to three hundred local performers under Capt. Charles W. Eddy.
By the spring of 1915, the lodge was also selling $50 bonds.
In May, it invited bids for a two-story building expected to cost about $20,000.
No single pageant paid for the temple.
The surviving references show a combination of land acquisition, committee work, performances and financing.
The Cornerstone
Six weeks after the groundbreaking, on July 17, 1915, the cornerstone ceremony brought another procession to the site.
Nearby buildings displayed flags and pennants.
Representatives of some thirty lodges marched behind a military band, with participants coming from Jamaica, Woodhaven, Flushing and beyond.
Grand Master George Freifeld conducted the ceremony with other Grand Lodge officers, including Grand Marshal Robert H. Robinson.
Moss, by then Master of Richmond Hill Lodge, presented a souvenir trowel.
The Grand Secretary read the contents of a box of memorials. The Grand Treasurer placed it in the stone.
The cornerstone was proved and consecrated with corn, wine and oil.
For the meaning of that ceremonial practice, see Corn, Wine, and Oil.
The Men Around the Stone
Senior Deacon Thomas J. Towers read the lodge’s history.
He later became Master in 1918 and was serving as district deputy by 1920.
The author’s research identifies him as the founding president of the Queens Masonic Association in 1925.
County Judge Burt Jay Humphrey of Jamaica delivered the oration.
The papers placed attendance at about 300.
W. Ralph Squire participated as “master architect” in the cornerstone ritual.
That ceremonial title does not establish that he designed the building. The actual architect remains unidentified in the evidence assembled here.
The construction contract called for completion by December 1.
A Fair Inside the Unfinished Temple
The lodge did not wait for the contractual completion date.
From October 18 through 23, 1915, it held a building-fund fair inside the new temple.
Newspapers described the building as complete except for interior finishing.
The fair used both the auditorium and the lodge room upstairs.
More than thirty booths were planned.
Prizes included a 1916 six-cylinder Buick and a player piano valued at $900.
Different evenings were assigned to visiting lodges and chapters. Eastern Star chapters from Richmond Hill, Hillside and Jamaica organized committees.
The fair’s director, Alfred R. Spoerl of Ridgewood Chapter, Royal Arch Masons, was not a member of Richmond Hill Lodge.
His experience with such events made him useful to the campaign.
The building was already doing what its planners intended: bringing several organizations into a common space.
It was also helping raise the money needed to complete the project.
Dedication in March 1916
Grand Master Freifeld returned on March 15, 1916, to dedicate the temple.
About 300 Masons attended, according to the Brooklyn Eagle.
Edward Vreeland, Master that year, requested the dedication.
Frank E. Phillips, the first Master, delivered the address.
The newspaper put the cost at about $20,000 and reported that the building was already becoming a popular center for social affairs.
Nine months separated groundbreaking from dedication.
That span should not be mistaken for an exact construction period. The building had already accommodated the October fair and was reported finished before the formal dedication.
Occupation, completion and dedication were different milestones.
Stage Below, Lodge Room Above
The material descriptions written during construction do not entirely agree.
One account describes tapestry brick with stone pillars.
Another mentions steel and cement construction with a terra-cotta front.
A third simply calls it a brick building.
These may describe different structural and decorative elements. Until the original plans and surviving fabric are examined together, that remains an interpretation.
The dimensions are more consistent.
The reports give a building frontage of 40 feet. Cornerstone and fair accounts describe a footprint of 40 by 90 feet.
That is distinct from the larger property assembled through the reported 35-foot and 25-foot acquisitions.
The Public Floor
The ground floor contained an auditorium reportedly seating about 500.
It had a stage, a kitchen and space that could be used for banquets.
A mezzanine accommodated women’s retiring rooms.
The second floor contained the lodge room, with a reception room and lounges beside it.
The earlier proposal for a basement banquet room appears to have changed before completion.
The later descriptions place the main assembly and banquet functions on the ground floor.
This was not merely a private meeting room with an impressive façade.
Its plan gave the lodge a setting for larger gatherings and made the building available for events that extended beyond formal Masonic work.
The Neighborhood’s Hall
For the following decades, the clippings show the temple being used in several ways.
Richmond Hill Lodge and its Eastern Star chapter held dances, invitation smokers and fairs.
A weeklong fair in 1920 was opened by Towers as district deputy.
Its program assigned evenings to different Masonic and affiliated bodies, including the Knights Templar, Shriners, Royal Arch, Amaranth and the blue lodges.
The Jamaica Hospital auxiliary also participated.
The calendar reveals an institution sustained by overlapping organizations rather than by one membership acting alone.
Other Lodges
A March 1925 notice described the degree team of Council Lodge No. 979 departing from the Richmond Hill temple for Brooklyn.
That establishes an association with the building.
It does not prove that Council was a regular tenant or maintained its principal meeting place there.
Wakefield Lodge No. 1110 is more securely documented.
Notices from October 1936 and January 1937 place it in the temple.
Wakefield met on Fridays while Richmond Hill retained its Thursday schedule.
The shared building preceded the two lodges’ eventual union in 1978 by decades.
Their institutional relationship is traced in Richmond Hill Lodge No. 892: The Lineage That Reached College Point.
When the Scouts Came
The building’s most conspicuous public occasion in the supplied record came in January 1929.
Charles Arthur Worden, scout executive of the Queens Council of the Boy Scouts of America and Richmond Hill Lodge’s newly elected Master, died that month.
His body lay in state in the auditorium.
Thousands of Scouts filed past, according to the contemporary report.
More than 600 Masons attended the Masonic service, filling anterooms, stairs and lower halls.
The reported crowd exceeded the auditorium’s stated seating capacity, and the account makes clear that people occupied several parts of the building.
Worden’s funeral joined civic and fraternal affiliations through one man.
It also demonstrated why the auditorium mattered.
The temple could provide a setting for a public farewell that reached far beyond the lodge’s regular meetings.
The Address the Lodge Printed
A summons for January 27, 1944, places Richmond Hill Lodge at 86-21 114th Street.
It identifies the second and fourth Thursdays as the regular meeting nights.
That printed lodge document is particularly useful.
Unlike a later recollection or an imprecise newspaper reference, it gave members the address where they were expected to assemble.
It establishes continued lodge use in 1944.
It also supplies the strongest address anchor for untangling earlier reports.
Four Street Names
Searching for the temple means searching more than one street name.
The record uses Elm Street, Stoothoff Avenue, Oak Street and 114th Street.
Those references should be compared, not silently forced into agreement.
Elm Street
Planning reports from 1911 onward place the site on Elm Street near Jamaica Avenue.
The March 1913 account also names Orchard Avenue and the neighboring church, school and Moss residence.
Stoothoff Avenue
From 1914 through 1920, Stoothoff Avenue becomes common in the coverage.
Cornerstone and fair notices locate the temple near or just north of Jamaica Avenue.
Occasional reports use Stoothoff Street.
Oak Street
Oak Street appears in the groundbreaking account printed by both the Brooklyn Eagle and The Chat.
Because the papers repeated the same account, they do not provide two independent confirmations.
The name may be an error, but that should be tested against maps rather than corrected by assumption.
114th Street
By 1927, coverage uses 114th Street.
The Union Congregational Church house was described as adjoining the temple there.
The 1944 summons provides the full number: 86-21.
The evidence strongly points toward a single site appearing under changing or inconsistent descriptions.
The numbered form is consistent with Queens street renaming, but the exact correspondence should be established through historic maps and property records.
The neighboring church and school provide additional checks.
After the Masons
The supplied building record becomes thin after the 1940s.
Richmond Hill Lodge joined Wakefield in 1978.
In 1986, Richmond Hill-Wakefield and Cathedral-Granite formed Queensboro Lodge No. 892, which the research packet places in College Point.
That institutional chronology does not establish the date when all Masonic use of the Richmond Hill temple ended.
A lodge could move while other organizations remained. A property could also be sold before its last Masonic occupants departed.
No deed, departure notice or final-meeting record has yet been supplied.
According to the author’s confirmation, the building survives outside Masonic use.
Its sale date, ownership sequence and later adaptations remain to be documented.
Through Queensboro’s later merger, Richmond Hill’s institutional lineage now continues within Anchor-Astoria Lodge No. 729.
That does not establish the physical location of Richmond Hill’s original charter or minute books.
Read Anchor-Astoria Lodge No. 729: Two Villages, One Number for the receiving lodge’s history.
What the Temple Made Possible
The Richmond Hill temple’s beginning is unusually well documented within this project.
Its record follows a site acquired for an Eastern Star hall through additional land purchases, a large theatrical production, bonds, a collective groundbreaking, a cornerstone ceremony and a fair held before the interior was finished.
Nine months after the first spades, the building was dedicated.
Its plan explains what that effort produced.
The auditorium supplied a stage, a banquet setting and a place for public gatherings.
The upper floor supplied a lodge room.
Together, they allowed one building to serve several kinds of association.
The lodge’s lineage eventually reached College Point. The temple remained on 114th Street.
Those are connected histories, but they are not the same one.
Sources and Research Notes
Newspaper references follow the author’s supplied clippings and research notes. Direct article URLs were not provided for those items, so publication names and dates are preserved rather than assigned speculative links.
Planning and Fundraising
Brooklyn Eagle, June 6, 1915; Brooklyn Daily Times, June 8, 1915; The Chat, June 12, 1915. Groundbreaking, participants and the collective use of spades.
Daily Long Island Democrat, April 10, 1911. Proposed temple and the Eastern Star property.
Brooklyn Daily Times, March 8, 1913; The Chat, March 15, 1913. Property dimensions, additional land, neighboring buildings and committee organization.
The Chat, February 21 and 28, 1914. Ladies’ auxiliary and its furnishing purpose.
Brooklyn Eagle, February 26 and April 8, 1914. Washington dinner and William C. Redfield’s appearance.
The Chat, December 12, 1914; Times Union, December 15, 1914; Brooklyn Daily Times, May 12, 1915. “Parada,” bond financing and building bids.
Cornerstone, Fair and Dedication
Brooklyn Eagle, July 18, 1915; Times Union, July 18, 1915, p. 12; The Chat, July 24, 1915. Cornerstone ceremony, participants, dimensions and materials.
Brooklyn Daily Times, January 4, 1925, p. 19. Thomas J. Towers and the Queens Masonic Association, as identified in the author’s research.
Times Union, September 26 and October 17, 1915; The Chat, October 2 and 23, 1915; Brooklyn Eagle, October 25, 1915. Fair arrangements, prizes, committees and use of the unfinished building.
Brooklyn Eagle, March 16, 1916. Dedication, reported cost, committee and social use.
Arrangement and Occupancy
Groundbreaking, cornerstone and fair reports cited above. Differing material descriptions and the reported 40-by-90-foot building footprint.
Times Union, July 18, 1915; Brooklyn Eagle, March 16, 1916; fair notices cited above. Auditorium, stage, kitchen, mezzanine and upper-floor lodge rooms.
Brooklyn Daily Times, February 3 and 22, 1918; The Chat, October 30, 1920. Social events and the later fair.
Brooklyn Daily Times, March 8, 1925. Council Lodge degree-team departure.
Lodge notices, October 1936 and January 1937, in the author’s packet. Wakefield Lodge’s use of the temple.
Brooklyn Daily Times, January 28, 1929. Charles Arthur Worden’s lying in state and Masonic service.
Richmond Hill Lodge No. 892, summons for January 27, 1944. Secure address and regular meeting schedule.
Later History
Author’s consolidation research. The 1978 Richmond Hill-Wakefield union and the 1986 formation of Queensboro.
Author’s confirmation. The building survives but is no longer in Masonic use. Its later ownership and departure chronology remain unestablished in the material supplied.
Research Gateways
The Brooklyn Public Library’s Brooklyn Newsstand
provides information about historic newspaper access.
The [NYC Automated City Register Information System](ACRIS Error
ACRIS Error
is a starting point for recorded property-document research.
provides access information for historical city records and photographic collections.
These are research gateways, not direct links to the individual clippings, deeds or photographs cited above.
What Remains to Be Established
The architect and contractor.
The original approved plans and certificate of occupancy.
The precise correspondence among the historical street names.
Whether the 1915 cornerstone survives and what it records.
Whether Council Lodge regularly met here.
The date Richmond Hill Lodge left the building.
The final date of any Masonic use.
The sale, ownership sequence and later alterations.
The survival of the auditorium, stage, lodge room and decorative features.
W. Ralph Squire’s ceremonial role as master architect is not used as an architectural attribution.
Queensboro’s College Point location is not used to assign a final occupancy date to the Richmond Hill building.
Continue the Anchor-Astoria Series
Part 1: The Active Lodge
Anchor-Astoria Lodge No. 729: Two Villages, One Number
Follow the College Point and Astoria institutions that united in 1985.
Part 2: The Present Temple
Anchor-Astoria Masonic Temple: Four Lodges, One Door in College Point
Explore the shared meeting place now used by four active lodges.
Part 3: The Richmond Hill Building
Richmond Hill Masonic Temple: A Lodge Room Upstairs, a Stage Downstairs — You are here.
Part 4: The Richmond Hill Lineage
Richmond Hill Lodge No. 892: The Lineage That Reached College Point
Trace the consolidation sequence that formed Queensboro and later entered Anchor-Astoria.
Previous Article: The College Point Temple · Series Overview · Next Article: The Richmond Hill Lineage
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