Queens History and Freemasonry / Masonic Buildings in Queens / Tadmor’s Two Temples
Masonic Buildings · Lodge Histories · Companion: Tadmor Lodge No. 923
A Ridgewood lodge bought a corner building in 1918 and opened a larger temple in 1926. Both survive: one as a restaurant on Fresh Pond Road, the other as a youth-services building at Forest Avenue and Summerfield Street.
November 8, 2026 · By Brete Murphy
Part of Freemason Buildings of Queens. The companion institutional history appears in The Lodges That Built Queens.
An Address Other Lodges Knew
On April 27, 1988, the Daily News announced a homecoming ceremony for a member of Heritage Lodge No. 284 who had become district deputy grand master of the Third Kings Masonic District.
The location was the Tadmor Masonic Temple, “59-03 Summerfield Avenue,” Ridgewood, Queens.
The street designation was mistaken. The address was on Summerfield Street.
The host was not Tadmor. That was characteristic of a building whose rooms had served lodges from beyond Ridgewood for decades.
Today, the [New York City Public Schools listing for the Greater Ridgewood Youth Council](Sitefinity trial version
Sitefinity trial version
identifies its location as 59-03 Summerfield Street.
Tadmor Lodge No. 923 now meets in Astoria.
Between those two facts lies the story of two buildings: a corner property on Fresh Pond Road that the lodge bought and outgrew, and the steel, terra cotta and brick temple that replaced it.
Both still stand.
The first, identified by the author as 69-98 Fresh Pond Road, now houses a restaurant. The second retains visible reminders of its Masonic beginnings.
Their histories overlap, but their ownership sequences and later uses must be traced separately.
For the people, institutions and neighborhood relationships behind the buildings, read Tadmor Lodge No. 923: A Monument in the Making of Ridgewood.
Rooms on Halleck Avenue
Tadmor’s chartered history began in 1915.
By August that year, it had rooms at 144 Halleck Avenue, at Fresh Pond Road.
Halleck Avenue is now 70th Avenue.
The early notices do not establish who owned the building or what else it housed. They do show that its rooms could accommodate a substantial gathering.
In March 1917, Tadmor’s Eastern Star chapter was instituted there before an audience reported at more than 300.
The lodge was already looking toward a home of its own.
Its social club held receptions for a temple fund. A 1917 event involving the Tall Cedars of Lebanon also directed proceeds toward the building campaign.
Before Tadmor owned a temple, it was organizing the social work needed to acquire one.
The First Temple
In 1918, the lodge took title to the Halleck Avenue property and began alterations.
The building was ready for use around February 1, 1919.
That month, the Eastern Star chapter moved into its new quarters and scheduled meetings for the second and fourth Tuesdays. The social club held a dance in the reception hall.
The notices reveal the building through its uses rather than through a complete architectural description.
The reception hall accommodated dances and a children’s Christmas celebration with a tree reportedly reaching the ceiling.
For a February 1920 bazaar, organizers planned to use what a newspaper called the “three upper floors and the basement.”
That wording suggests extensive space on several levels, but it is not a measured building survey.
The temple also served the rites of members’ lives. In January 1922, a funeral was held there under the lodge’s auspices.
Paying for Ownership
The purchase left Tadmor with a debt reported at about $20,000.
Fundraising occupied much of 1919 and 1920.
There was a summer festival at Trommer’s Gardens in Bushwick, the weeklong February 1920 bazaar, and theatrical events.
For the bazaar, an automobile and a player piano served as prominent prizes.
These campaigns drew on more than members’ subscriptions. They required committees, merchants, performers, neighboring organizations and people willing to attend.
By December 1923, a newspaper described the lodge as being in splendid financial condition.
That was a contemporary report, not a surviving balance sheet. It nevertheless marks a contrast with the debt that had driven the earlier campaigns.
Granite Under the Same Roof
The building did not remain Tadmor’s alone.
Granite Lodge No. 1011, organized by men from Tadmor in 1922, also met there.
A district visitation schedule published in January 1925 placed Granite at the Masonic Temple, 144 Halleck Avenue.
That June, Tadmor and Granite held a joint Flag Day observance in the building.
The shared premises establish a continuing relationship between the two lodges. They do not establish the financial terms of Granite’s occupancy.
Granite’s later institutional history appears in Richmond Hill Lodge No. 892: The Lineage That Reached College Point.
Sold—or Still Owned?
Ownership is the first temple’s central puzzle.
A Tadmor anniversary history published in 1946 says the lodge sold the building to the Improved Order of Red Men in April 1922.
Contemporary notices complicate that account without necessarily disproving it.
Tadmor continued meeting at Fresh Pond Road and Halleck Avenue until the summer of 1926. Most notices continued to call the building the Masonic Temple.
Two notices from 1925, however, placed Tadmor meetings in the Oneida Wigwam at the same corner.
A 1928 death notice identifies a Tadmor member who also belonged to Oneida Tribe No. 11 of the Red Men.
These references are consistent with a sale followed by continued Masonic tenancy. They do not prove that arrangement.
A deed would establish the transfer. Lodge minutes or a lease might explain why Tadmor and Granite remained.
Until those records are found, ownership and occupancy should not be treated as the same thing.
The building could remain a Masonic meeting place after it ceased to be Masonic property.
Choosing the Second Corner
The site at Forest Avenue and Summerfield Street was in Tadmor’s hands long before construction began.
In April 1923, the Brooklyn Eagle reported that the lodge had owned it since its early years, about nine years before.
The lot measured 75 by 100 feet and was described as free and clear.
At first, the members considered it too small.
In March 1922, after a committee examined vacant property around Ridgewood, the lodge voted to purchase a larger site on the former Meyer estate at Kossuth Place and Fresh Pond Road, extending toward Sedgwick Street.
The proposal called for a banquet hall and an auditorium with a stage, each seating more than a thousand.
Architects were consulted.
After further consideration, the trustees recommended against the Meyer property. By the end of July, members had voted to build on the corner they already owned.
The reported estimate was $150,000.
The Brooklyn Eagle described the proposed building as “the largest Masonic Temple in Queens County.”
That phrase belongs to the project’s contemporary publicity. It is not an independently verified ranking.
Plans Cut Back, Costs Still Rising
The schedule slipped.
In April 1923, the lodge hoped to begin work within weeks and finish by March 1924, in time for its tenth anniversary year.
By December 1924, the committee reported that construction costs were too high to proceed.
The plans were reduced.
A proposal that had included a large auditorium for community use was recast around the lodge and its affiliated organizations, with an estimate of $125,000 before furnishings.
Members were asked to buy non-interest-bearing bonds to bridge the financing gap.
Those figures describe successive plans, not a single fixed budget.
The eventual building would retain substantial assembly space, and the reported cost would rise again.
The Cornerstone of 1925
A September 1925 report placed groundbreaking about a month earlier.
The cornerstone ceremony was announced for Saturday afternoon, September 26.
Grand Master William A. Rowan was to conduct the ceremony after a procession from the old temple along Halleck, Buchman and Catalpa Avenues and down Forest Avenue.
Grand officers were to assemble at Wyckoff Baptist Church across the street.
Residents were asked to fly American flags, and advance notices said Ridgewood would declare the afternoon a holiday.
These reports document the announced arrangements. They are not, by themselves, a complete retrospective account of what occurred.
What Went into the Stone
The building committee was chaired by Edward J. Smith, Tadmor’s first Master.
The published program described a copper box measuring eight by eight by ten inches.
Its intended contents included the lodge’s history and roster, a groundbreaking program, the committee’s report, national and state founding documents, a Bible, a silk flag, Brooklyn newspapers and a photograph of Smith.
The box joined the lodge’s particular history to a larger civic and national story.
The cornerstone still visible on the building provides physical evidence of the project’s 1925 identity, even while details of the ceremony remain dependent on the newspaper record.
Opening the New Home
Tadmor held its first meeting in the new building on July 19, 1926.
Five candidates were initiated, and members toured their new home.
That October, a seven-day bazaar was planned to occupy the building throughout. Later reporting credited the campaign with raising $40,000 toward furnishings.
Granite Lodge presented a pipe organ.
On November 29, more than 1,500 Masons reportedly attended an occasion at which Master Charles W. Froessel raised five of his own brothers to the degree of Master Mason.
About a thousand were said to have crowded into the lodge room.
Grand Master Harold J. Richardson’s dedication of the temple was announced for December 11.
The sequence matters: occupation, furnishing campaigns, major ceremonies and formal dedication were separate milestones.
The building was in use before its dedication.
What They Built
Contemporary accounts describe steel, terra cotta and tapestry brick construction.
The site had 75 feet on Summerfield Street and 100 feet on Forest Avenue.
The principal lodge room occupied the second floor and was promoted as the largest in Brooklyn or Queens.
A smaller meeting room occupied the main floor.
Despite the earlier reduction of plans, the basement was described as containing an auditorium accommodating about a thousand people.
A reception hall supported dances and social-club events.
These are reported capacities rather than verified modern occupancy limits.
The cost was reported at $200,000 by the time the temple opened, with furnishings described separately in some coverage.
The newspapers that described the project did not identify its architect in the material assembled for this article.
An Address That Changed
An October 1926 reference gives the building as 2301 Summerfield Street.
By 1988, the Daily News used 59-03, although it mistakenly called the street an avenue.
The current New York City Public Schools listing uses 59-03 Summerfield Street.
The older and newer address forms should be compared through property records before assuming that every historical number was assigned or printed consistently.
The Masonic Identity Still on the Walls
The author’s examination of street-view imagery records a building that still announces its origins.
At the Forest Avenue corner, the cornerstone reads:
Tadmor Lodge No. 923
F. & A. M.
A.D. 1925
A.L. 5925
A square and compasses is cut into the side face.
The two year forms appear together as part of the stone’s Masonic inscription.
High on the corner, another carved panel places the square and compasses between two pillars, framed by scrollwork.
The walls are mottled buff brick, corresponding to the tapestry-brick descriptions in the 1926 notices.
Pale trim, a running-wave band and arched window heads articulate the elevations.
The Summerfield Street entrance is arched, with a shield above it.
Along Forest Avenue, sections of the upper wall are largely blank between pilasters.
That arrangement may correspond to the principal lodge room, but an exterior view cannot establish the interior plan or explain the original design decisions.
The architect’s drawings remain the missing evidence.
A Temple for Queens
The building served more than Tadmor.
On May 19, 1928, three new lodges were constituted there in a gathering attended by the Masters of all thirty-two lodges in the Queens district, according to contemporary reports.
Grand Master John A. Dutton presided, assisted by District Deputy Charles W. Froessel, Tadmor’s Master in 1926.
The three were:
- Suburban Lodge No. 1087.
- Maspeth Lodge No. 1089.
- Rufus King Lodge No. 1091.
The ceremony date and the Maspeth and Rufus King numbers follow the Grand Lodge research supplied with this article. Some newspaper references confuse the numbers.
Suburban made the temple its home and was still holding ceremonies there in 1955.
The author’s lineage research traces Maspeth and Rufus King into Harmony Lodge No. 241.
Wakefield’s Constitution
On June 11, 1931, Wakefield Lodge No. 1110 of South Ozone Park was constituted in Tadmor’s lodge room.
Its tenth-anniversary book later thanked Tadmor for the use of its “beautiful and commodious temple.”
The phrase describes more than architectural admiration.
A lodge elsewhere in Queens could begin its chartered life in a building that another institution had financed and maintained.
For Wakefield’s later relationship with Richmond Hill and Anchor-Astoria, read Richmond Hill Lodge No. 892: The Lineage That Reached College Point.
Decades of Use
Tadmor marked its 31st anniversary at the temple in 1946.
A 1968 death notice summoned members to Masonic services at the lodge in Ridgewood.
A Past Master who died in 1986 was described as a trustee of Tadmor Temple.
The 1988 Heritage Lodge announcement then supplies the Summerfield address with which this account began.
Together, these references establish a long Masonic life.
They do not establish the date of the eventual property transfer.
After Tadmor
In June 2011, the Daily News reported that Tadmor had declined to about sixty members, had sold its building and was meeting in an American Legion hall in Forest Hills.
The report did not, in the material supplied here, establish the sale date or the buyer.
Nor does the 1988 use of the temple prove that Tadmor still owned it then. A sale could have preceded the final Masonic meetings.
The deed history is needed to distinguish ownership, occupancy and departure.
Tadmor remains active and now meets at the Advance Masonic Temple, 21-14 30th Avenue, Astoria.
The author confirmed its continuing presence there in November 2026.
The date of the move from Forest Hills remains open.
Its institutional story continues in Tadmor Lodge No. 923: A Monument in the Making of Ridgewood.
Two Buildings, Two Later Lives
The Greater Ridgewood Youth Council is listed at 59-03 Summerfield Street.
The date it began using the former temple, whether it purchased the property directly from a Masonic owner, and how much of the 1926 interior survives remain questions for records and an authorized interior visit.
The first temple also survives.
The author identifies it as the three-story brick corner building at 69-98 Fresh Pond Road and 70th Avenue.
Street-view imagery dated December 2021 and September 2024 shows stone bands, a bracketed cornice with carved garland ornament, and ground-floor storefronts.
The author identifies the corner business as Seth Thai Restaurant.
That identification describes the later use recorded in the supplied research; it is not a complete tenant or ownership history.
No clearly legible Masonic marker appears in the cited street views.
Without earlier photographs or alteration plans, the visible exterior cannot establish which features, if any, resulted from Tadmor’s 1918–1919 work.
A Home, Then a Monument
Tadmor acquired its first temple to secure a home.
Its second was a more conspicuous undertaking: a purpose-built hall with multiple meeting spaces, an auditorium and an exterior that announced its Masonic identity.
For decades, other lodges knew the way to Forest Avenue and Summerfield Street.
The institution eventually moved. The buildings found other uses.
Their survival makes it possible to read two different stages of the same lodge’s ambitions: the adaptation of an existing corner property, and the construction of a temple intended to be noticed.
Neither building’s later life is fully documented yet.
That incompleteness is part of the history—not a reason to confuse what can be seen with what has been proved.
Sources and Research Notes
Newspaper references follow the author’s supplied Tadmor clippings packets. Direct links are included where an identified public source is available. Unlinked clipping references are preserved rather than assigned speculative URLs.
Addresses and Present Uses
Daily News, April 27, 1988, p. 840. Heritage Lodge ceremony and the Tadmor Masonic Temple address, printed as 59-03 Summerfield Avenue.
New York City Public Schools, Greater Ridgewood Youth Council. Current directory address: 59-03 Summerfield Street. The listing establishes location, not ownership or acquisition date.
Author’s identification, November 2026, using Google Street View imagery dated December 2021 and September 2024. Exterior observations and the identification of the former first temple at 69-98 Fresh Pond Road, including restaurant use.
QNS, “Go Back in History,” September 2017. Halleck Avenue’s later identification as 70th Avenue.
The Halleck Avenue Rooms and First Temple
Brooklyn Daily Times, August 21, 1915. Tadmor’s rooms at 144 Halleck Avenue.
The Chat, March 31, 1917. Institution of the Eastern Star chapter.
The Chat, March 17, 1917, two items; Brooklyn Eagle, April 17, 1917. Temple-fund activity.
Ridgewood Times, June 14, 1946. Retrospective account of the 1918 purchase and completion of alterations around February 1, 1919.
The Chat, February 22, 1919; Brooklyn Eagle, February 21 and 22, 1919. Use of the altered premises.
The Chat, December 25, 1920. Reception hall and children’s Christmas celebration.
Brooklyn Citizen, October 19, 1919. Planned use of “three upper floors and the basement.”
Brooklyn Daily Times, January 20, 1922. Funeral in the temple.
Brooklyn Citizen, August 7 and October 19, 1919; Times Union, January 18, 1920; Brooklyn Daily Times, December 19, 1923. Debt, fundraising and later financial description.
Granite and the Ownership Question
Brooklyn Daily Times, January 4 and June 14, 1925. Granite’s meeting address and the joint Flag Day observance.
Queens Masonic District history. Granite’s origins among Tadmor members.
Ridgewood Times, June 14, 1946. Reported April 1922 sale to the Improved Order of Red Men.
The Chat, May 9 and October 10, 1925. Oneida Wigwam references.
Brooklyn Eagle, February 18, 1928. Oneida Tribe No. 11 reference.
Brooklyn Daily Times, December 21, 1924; The Chat, October 17, 1925. Continued Masonic Temple designation.
Site Selection and Construction
Brooklyn Eagle, March 25, 1922. Meyer estate proposal and the existing plot described as free and clear.
Brooklyn Eagle, August 3, 1922. Decision to build at Forest Avenue and Summerfield Street and the advertised scale of the proposal.
Brooklyn Eagle, April 27, 1923. Earlier ownership of the corner and hoped-for completion in 1924.
Brooklyn Daily Times, December 21, 1924; Times Union, December 26, 1924. Deferral, revised plans and member bonds.
Times Union, September 25, 1925; The Chat, September 26, 1925. Groundbreaking reference and advance cornerstone arrangements, procession and copper-box contents. These are advance reports, not complete post-event accounts.
Ridgewood Times, June 14, 1946. Retrospective account that prints the cornerstone year as 1926, conflicting with the 1925 notices and surviving inscription.
Opening and Architectural Description
Brooklyn Eagle, July 20, 1926. First meeting on July 19.
Times Union, September 8, 1926; Daily News, October 17, 1926; The Chat, November 27, 1926. Bazaar and furnishing campaign.
Brooklyn Eagle, November 28 and November 30, 1926. Froessel family degree ceremony, organ and announced December 11 dedication.
The Chat, November 27, 1926, and January 1, 1927; Daily News, October 17, 1926. Building description and reported cost.
Brooklyn Daily Times, May 15, 1927. Reception-hall dance and reported fundraising proceeds.
Brooklyn Eagle, October 22, 1926. Address given as 2301 Summerfield Street.
Other Lodges and Later Use
Brooklyn Daily Times, May 17, 1928; Brooklyn Eagle, May 20, 1928; related Times Union clipping. Three lodge constitutions. The exact Times Union publication date should be checked against the original clipping.
Grand Lodge research supplied by the author. May 3, 1928 charter grants; May 19 constitution ceremony; Maspeth No. 1089 and Rufus King No. 1091.
Daily News, September 21, 1955. Suburban Lodge’s continued use of the temple.
Wakefield Lodge tenth-anniversary book, 1940. Constitution on June 11, 1931, and acknowledgment of Tadmor’s temple.
Ridgewood Times, June 14, 1946; Newsday, September 24, 1968, and July 6, 1986. Anniversary, Masonic services and temple trusteeship.
Daily News, June 28, 2011. Membership comparison, reported sale and Forest Hills meeting place.
Brete Murphy, confirmation supplied November 2026. Tadmor’s continuing meetings at the Advance Masonic Temple in Astoria.
