Queens History and Freemasonry / Active Lodges of Queens / Anchor-Astoria Series
Part 4 of the Anchor-Astoria Lodge series · An institutional history within The Lodges That Built Queens
Previous: The Richmond Hill Temple · Series Overview · Return to Part 1
Richmond Hill Lodge began in 1911, built a temple within five years and carried its number through successive consolidations. By the time Queensboro Lodge No. 892 entered Anchor-Astoria in 2024, that number represented four separately founded Queens lodges.
November 10, 2026 · By Brete Murphy
Two Lodges, Two Nights
On Tuesday evening, May 21, 1912, Deputy Grand Master George Freifeld and his officers came to Arcanum Hall, at Jamaica and Jefferson avenues in Richmond Hill.
They constituted Hillside Lodge No. 894 of Woodhaven.
The next evening, May 22, they returned to the same hall and constituted Richmond Hill Lodge No. 892.
The two lodges were constituted a night and two numbers apart, in the same rented room, under the same visiting officers.
Their organizing histories had begun earlier. Constitution was the formal occasion that brought them together in these consecutive ceremonies.
Both subsequently built temples: Hillside on 96th Street in Woodhaven and Richmond Hill on Stoothoff Avenue. Both supplied meeting places for younger institutions.
Their later lineages took different routes.
The author’s consolidation research traces Hillside into Springfield Gardens Lodge No. 1057. Richmond Hill’s line reached Anchor-Astoria Lodge No. 729 in College Point.
This is the story of that second road—and of No. 892, which continued for decades after the original Richmond Hill lodge entered its first consolidation.
Fifty Men in Richmond Hill
In April 1911, the Daily Long Island Democrat reported that a new lodge was organizing in Richmond Hill with fifty members.
It had already selected officers.
Frank E. Phillips was to be Master, W. R. Failing Senior Warden, Frederick Boschen Treasurer and E. Stanley Homan Secretary.
Dr. L. Howard Moss was Senior Deacon.
Edward Vreeland was among the masters of ceremonies, and the Rev. William P. Evans, rector of the Church of the Resurrection, was chaplain.
The lodge was instituted under dispensation on May 17, 1911.
It met at Arcanum Hall on the second and fourth Thursdays.
After its constitution in May 1912, about 125 members and guests celebrated at a banquet in Forum Hall.
The Men the Notices Reveal
The occupations recoverable from the papers give the membership some texture.
Moss was a physician.
Vreeland dealt in hay and grain.
Peter Fraser, a charter member who died in 1914, was a plastering contractor born in Liverpool.
Emil G. Sauer designed carpets. Francis C. Richardson was a builder. Charles F. Ruckstuhl was treasurer of a printing firm.
These examples do not constitute a complete social survey.
They show an institution connected to Richmond Hill’s professional, commercial and building trades.
The membership grew from the fifty reported during organization to about 160 by the middle of 1915.
Building a Public Presence
The lodge’s first major project was its temple.
The campaign left an unusually detailed record:
- A theatrical spectacle at Columbia Hall in December 1914.
- A June 1915 groundbreaking in which about 150 members each turned a spadeful of earth.
- A cornerstone ceremony conducted by the Grand Master that July.
- A fundraising fair inside the unfinished building in October.
- Formal dedication on March 15, 1916.
The building’s auditorium and stage below, with a lodge room above, gave Richmond Hill Lodge a setting for activities larger than its regular meetings.
That history appears in Richmond Hill Masonic Temple: A Lodge Room Upstairs, a Stage Downstairs.
The lodge had already begun cultivating a public calendar.
In April 1914, United States Secretary of Commerce William C. Redfield delivered the historical lecture at a Master Mason degree.
In 1926, about 400 guests attended its fifteenth-anniversary dinner at Manhattan’s Hotel McAlpin.
In April 1928, Master Virgil Guernsey led the lodge, Eastern Star chapters and Richmond Hill Square Club to worship at the First Presbyterian Church on 111th Street.
These occasions made the institution visible beyond its membership.
They do not establish that it represented the neighborhood as a whole.
Thomas J. Towers
One member’s career shows how a neighborhood lodge contributed to borough-wide Masonic activity.
Thomas J. Towers was Junior Deacon in 1914 and Senior Deacon in 1915.
At the cornerstone ceremony, he read Richmond Hill Lodge’s history.
He became Master in 1918 and was serving as district deputy by 1920.
When Queens lodges organized the Queens Masonic Association in 1925 to support relief work for Masons’ widows and orphans, Towers was among the founders and became its first president, according to the author’s newspaper research.
A Familiar Figure Across Queens
Towers appears in other lodges’ records.
In January 1925, he delivered the historical lecture at Tadmor Lodge No. 923 in Ridgewood.
In November 1926, he was among the former district deputies assisting when Tadmor’s Master, Charles W. Froessel, raised five of his brothers in the new Tadmor temple.
In June 1931, Towers participated as Deputy Grand Master in Wakefield Lodge’s constitution.
That last connection would acquire a different significance decades later, when Wakefield and Richmond Hill consolidated.
The relationship was not created by the merger. Personal and ceremonial connections preceded it.
For Tadmor’s side of these events, read Tadmor Lodge No. 923: A Monument in the Making of Ridgewood.
A Scout Leader and a Recurring Family Name
A November 1932 Past Masters’ night supplies part of Richmond Hill’s leadership history.
The names include Gilbert J. Raynor, Frank J. Weigand, George M. Hieber, Walter I. Lunt, Frederick J. Hall, Joseph H. Vreeland, Albert M. Corby, Virgil Guernsey, Frederick M. Bronson and Roger Grothmann Jr.
Elmer E. Bullis was Master in 1932.
The available list is not complete for every year.
Charles Arthur Worden occupied a different place in the record.
The scout executive of the Queens Council of the Boy Scouts of America was elected Master for 1929 but died that January.
His body lay in state in the temple auditorium while thousands of Scouts filed past, according to contemporary coverage.
The exact point he had reached in the installation and service sequence requires checking before describing him as having served a full term.
The Maybeck References
The Maybeck name recurs across decades.
Harry G. Maybeck participated in degree work and the 1915 fair committee.
Josephine Maybeck worked with the Eastern Star committee.
Frank W. Maybeck was raised in 1916 and remained a member when he died in 1933.
In 1987, Harold Bernard Maybeck, associated with H. G. Maybeck Co., a Richmond Hill canvas-goods and flag business, was still identified with Richmond Hill-Wakefield Lodge in his death notice.
These references establish repeated participation by people sharing the name.
The exact relationships among all of them should be demonstrated through genealogical and business records rather than assumed.
A Lodge Rehearsed in a Cellar
Wakefield began in South Ozone Park.
On November 12, 1929, eleven Masons met in the upper rooms of the Glen Morris Civic Club, 114-14 116th Street, to organize a lodge for the section formerly known as Wakefield Farms.
The group included:
- Edward W. Palmer of Astor Lodge No. 603.
- William A. Rauh of Naval Lodge No. 69.
- Thomas J. Hart and Howard T. Hart of Day Star Lodge No. 798.
- George Caldicott of Anthon Lodge No. 769.
- Einar N. Ericson of Hill Grove Lodge No. 540.
- Jeromus H. Meissner of Hillside Lodge No. 894.
- Otto L. Thomsen of Mizpah Lodge No. 738.
- Michael G. Segelbacher of Oxoboxo Lodge No. 116 in Connecticut.
- Roy A. Steinmetz and Henry Christ of Richmond Hill Lodge No. 892.
Their affiliations crossed neighborhoods and state boundaries.
They did not begin with an established lodge room of their own.
Standard Lodge No. 1
Wakefield’s tenth-anniversary book tells the next stage with affection.
Palmer fitted out the cellar of his home as a practice lodge room.
The prospective officers called it Standard Lodge No. 1.
That name belonged to their rehearsal setting, not to a separately chartered lodge established by the evidence here.
They met once or twice a week for sessions lasting three or four hours.
Palmer and the elder Hart claimed a leather settee, except when the adjacent stove made it uncomfortable.
Steinmetz, the prospective Junior Warden, was so tall that the cellar beams obscured his head when he stood. He had to stoop at his station, inviting jokes about the ritual requirement to stand erect.
Hot lunches followed the rehearsals.
The story is valuable precisely because it is so particular.
A lodge did not emerge only from an application and a charter. Its officers practiced, corrected one another and made a workable institution in borrowed domestic space.
From Cathedral to Tadmor to Richmond Hill
In June 1930, the officers exemplified the three degrees before Cathedral Lodge No. 1031 and obtained a certificate of proficiency.
Wakefield received its dispensation on August 13, 1930.
It was instituted on September 8 in Cathedral’s lodge room at 113-10 Liberty Avenue.
Edward J. Smith, Tadmor’s first Master and a participant in Grand Lodge charter work, acted as Grand Marshal, according to Wakefield’s anniversary account.
On June 11, 1931, Wakefield was constituted in Tadmor’s lodge room in Ridgewood.
Towers participated as Deputy Grand Master and Smith as Grand Secretary.
Those ceremonial assignments should not be confused with proof that each man held the corresponding elected Grand Lodge office.
Finding Regular Rooms
For part of its early life, Wakefield met in a church that members arranged for lodge use at each meeting.
A mid-1930s notice identified in the research names St. Matthew’s Church in South Ozone Park.
The complete occupancy sequence remains to be established.
By October 1936 and January 1937, notices placed Wakefield in the Richmond Hill Masonic Temple.
Richmond Hill retained its Thursday schedule. Wakefield used Fridays.
Its first Master, Rauh, had become district deputy for the Second Queens District in 1933.
Wakefield’s history shows how a new lodge could draw on several older institutions: members from many lodges, rehearsal space in a home, institution in Cathedral’s room, constitution in Tadmor’s, and later meetings in Richmond Hill’s temple.
Members Elsewhere
A summons for January 27, 1944, records Richmond Hill’s 788th stated communication.
The lodge still met on the second and fourth Thursdays at 86-21 114th Street.
The summons included a letter from the Grand Master concerning the Masonic War Chest.
After the war, death notices identify members living well beyond Richmond Hill.
The supplied examples include Syracuse, St. Petersburg, Massapequa, White Plains, Williston Park and Glens Falls.
They retained their affiliations after moving.
These notices establish individual continuity at a distance.
They do not provide a complete demographic survey, annual membership figures or a sufficient explanation for later merger decisions.
The record shows dispersal. It does not establish every consequence.
Richmond Hill and Wakefield Unite
On January 1, 1978, Richmond Hill Lodge No. 892 and Wakefield Lodge No. 1110 consolidated as Richmond Hill-Wakefield Lodge No. 892.
The date and direct relationship are confirmed in the author’s supplied research.
The combined institution retained Richmond Hill’s number.
The union brought together lodges that had shared members and meeting space long before consolidation.
It was not the first time the two histories had crossed.
The evidence supplied here does not establish where the combined lodge met throughout 1978–1986.
Its name should not be used to assume continued occupancy of the Richmond Hill temple.
Cathedral and Granite
The next partner was already a combined lodge.
Granite Lodge No. 1011 had formed among Tadmor members in 1922 and received its charter in 1923.
It met in Tadmor’s first temple at Fresh Pond Road and Halleck Avenue.
When Tadmor opened its larger temple at Forest Avenue and Summerfield Street, Granite presented the pipe organ.
Cathedral Lodge No. 1031 was chartered in 1924.
It met in the Civic Theatre Building at 113-10 Liberty Avenue—the room in which Wakefield had been instituted.
That Liberty Avenue address must not be confused with Richmond Hill’s temple at 86-21 114th Street, north of Jamaica Avenue.
On May 4, 1976, according to the consolidation notes, Granite and Cathedral united as Cathedral-Granite Lodge No. 1011.
For their Ridgewood meeting-place connection, read Tadmor’s Two Masonic Temples: From Fresh Pond Road to Summerfield Street.
Queensboro Lodge No. 892
On December 4, 1986, Richmond Hill-Wakefield and Cathedral-Granite consolidated as Queensboro Lodge No. 892.
The number now represented four separately founded institutions:
- Richmond Hill.
- Wakefield.
- Cathedral.
- Granite.
The author’s research places Queensboro in College Point.
Whether it moved there immediately upon formation, and the precise sequence of its meeting places, remain open questions.
Older names persisted in family notices.
Harold Bernard Maybeck’s July 1987 obituary still identified Richmond Hill-Wakefield even though Queensboro had already formed.
That wording records how an affiliation was remembered. It does not overturn the consolidation chronology.
The Last Lodge to Hold No. 892
According to the supplied consolidation notes, Queensboro merged into Anchor-Astoria Lodge No. 729 on April 13, 2024.
The exact date awaits comparison with the formal Grand Lodge record.
Anchor-Astoria retained its own name and number and remains active in College Point.
With that union, No. 892 ceased to identify a separate lodge in this lineage.
The organizing history had begun in 1911; the charter followed in 1912.
It is therefore more precise to describe a history extending from 1911 to 2024 than to assign the number itself 113 chartered years.
The distinction does not diminish the continuity.
The number had passed from Richmond Hill through Richmond Hill-Wakefield and Queensboro before the line entered Anchor-Astoria.
Read Anchor-Astoria Lodge No. 729: Two Villages, One Number.
What the Number Carried
In May 1912, two lodges were constituted on consecutive nights in the same rented hall.
Richmond Hill went on to build a temple, sustain a public calendar and share its rooms with a younger lodge.
Wakefield’s organizers brought experience from other institutions and rehearsed beneath the beams of a member’s cellar.
Cathedral supplied rooms on Liberty Avenue. Granite carried a Ridgewood relationship with Tadmor.
The later consolidations did not make those beginnings identical.
They brought them into a shared institutional succession.
No. 892 was the thread through Richmond Hill-Wakefield and Queensboro. Its separate use ended when Queensboro entered Anchor-Astoria.
The buildings, names and neighborhoods followed different paths.
The lineage reached College Point.
Sources and Research Notes
Newspaper and anniversary-book references follow the author’s supplied research packet. Direct links are provided where an established article or research gateway is available. Unlinked historical citations are not assigned speculative URLs.
Richmond Hill’s Formation
Brooklyn Eagle, May 19, 23 and 27, 1912; Daily Long Island Democrat, May 24, 1912. Hillside and Richmond Hill constitution ceremonies and related events.
Daily Long Island Democrat, April 10, 1911. Organizing membership, officers and expected dispensation.
Richmond Hill Lodge No. 892, summons, January 27, 1944. Printed institution date of May 17, 1911, meeting address and schedule.
The Chat, June 12 and October 2, 1915; Times Union, July 18, 1915. Early membership figures.
Members’ obituaries in the author’s research packet. Occupational examples.
Some 1915 reports give a dispensation date in 1910. The April 1911 organizing report, the later anniversary calculations and the lodge’s printed 1944 institution date support the 1911 sequence used here. Grand Lodge proceedings should settle the discrepancy.
Temple, Public Events and Officers
Temple construction sources assembled in Richmond Hill Masonic Temple: A Lodge Room Upstairs, a Stage Downstairs.
Brooklyn Eagle, April 8, 1914. William C. Redfield’s appearance.
Times Union, May 14, 1926; The Chat, May 7, 1927; April 1928 church-service clipping in the research packet. Anniversary and public events.
Times Union, July 18, 1915; Brooklyn Eagle, March 16, 1916; The Chat, October 30, 1920. Thomas J. Towers’s early offices and district role.
Brooklyn Daily Times, January 4, 1925, p. 19. Queens Masonic Association and Towers’s presidency.
Brooklyn Daily Times, January 4, 1925; Brooklyn Eagle, November 30, 1926. Towers at Tadmor events.
Times Union, November 18, 1932. Past Masters’ night and partial leadership list. Garbled OCR years require comparison with the original image.
Brooklyn Daily Times, January 28, 1929. Charles Arthur Worden’s death and lying in state.
Brooklyn Daily Times, October 30, 1916; Frank W. Maybeck death notice, 1933; Harold Bernard Maybeck death notice, 1987. Maybeck membership references.
Wakefield Lodge
Wakefield Lodge No. 1110, tenth-anniversary book, 1940, “Ten Years of Masonic Endeavor,” by Edward W. Palmer. Founders, affiliations, cellar rehearsals, proficiency work, dispensation, institution and constitution.
Same anniversary account. Rauh’s district-deputy service and ceremonial participation by Towers and Smith.
Mid-1930s church notice; lodge notices of October 1936 and January 1937, supplied in the research packet. Wakefield’s changing meeting places.
The founding affiliations are reproduced as supplied. No numerical summary of the source lodges is imposed where it conflicts with the listed names.
Later Membership and Consolidation
Richmond Hill Lodge summons, January 27, 1944. The 788th stated communication and Masonic War Chest letter.
Members’ death notices in Newsday, the Reporter Dispatch, the Post-Standard and the Tampa Bay Times, 1948–1979. Continued affiliation after relocation.
Author’s consolidation research and November 2026 confirmation. Richmond Hill and Wakefield’s January 1, 1978 union.
Author’s consolidation notes. Granite and Cathedral’s May 4, 1976 union.
Tadmor research packet, including Brooklyn Eagle, November 30, 1926. Granite’s origins, meeting-place relationship and organ gift.
Wakefield tenth-anniversary book. Cathedral’s Liberty Avenue lodge room.
Author’s consolidation research and November 2026 confirmation. Formation of Queensboro on December 4, 1986.
Author’s consolidation notes. Queensboro’s April 13, 2024 merger into Anchor-Astoria. Exact date to be checked against the formal Grand Lodge record.
Author’s related lineage research. Hillside’s later connection with Springfield Gardens Lodge No. 1057.
Research Gateways
The Brooklyn Public Library’s Brooklyn Newsstand provides information about historic newspaper access.
The [Anchor-Astoria lodge history](connect | Anchor-Astoria #0729
connect | Anchor-Astoria #0729
supplies background on Anchor and Astoria’s separate 1985 union. It is not used as proof of every later consolidation date.
These are source and access links, not direct links to all the clippings and documents cited above.
Consolidation at a Glance
- May 17, 1911: Richmond Hill Lodge instituted under dispensation.
- May 1912: Richmond Hill charter granted.
- May 22, 1912: Richmond Hill Lodge constituted.
- September 8, 1930: Wakefield Lodge instituted under dispensation.
- June 11, 1931: Wakefield Lodge constituted.
- May 4, 1976: Granite and Cathedral consolidate as Cathedral-Granite No. 1011.
- January 1, 1978: Richmond Hill and Wakefield consolidate as Richmond Hill-Wakefield No. 892.
- December 4, 1986: Richmond Hill-Wakefield and Cathedral-Granite form Queensboro No. 892.
- April 13, 2024: Queensboro merges into Anchor-Astoria No. 729, according to the supplied consolidation notes.
Questions Still Open
- Confirm the precise 2024 merger date against Grand Lodge records.
- Establish where Richmond Hill-Wakefield met between 1978 and 1986.
- Determine whether Queensboro began meeting in College Point immediately upon formation.
- Identify the complete sequence of Wakefield’s church and lodge-room occupancies.
- Resolve Richmond Hill’s remaining founding-date discrepancies.
- Confirm whether the Frank Phillips who died at the Jamaica Masonic Temple in April 1928 was Richmond Hill’s first Master.
- Complete the list of Richmond Hill Masters for 1917, 1920, 1923 and later years.
- Establish the location and condition of surviving predecessor records and artifacts.
Institutional succession is not used here as proof that every original charter or minute book is physically stored in College Point.
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
Discover the building Richmond Hill Lodge created in 1915–1916.
Part 4: The Lineage
Richmond Hill Lodge No. 892: Four Lodges and the Long Life of a Number — You are here.
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