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What Became of Queens’ Halls, Lodges, and Councils—and Why “Decline” Is Too Small a Word
When New Life Fellowship bought the Elks lodge building on Queens Boulevard, a newspaper report described plans that did not begin with stripping everything out.
The church intended to retain the bowling alley for its youth program and continue operating the large kitchen. The rathskeller—the building’s beer tavern—would remain temporarily, with a café among its possible future uses.
The Queens Chronicle’s account of the sale reported a $6.5 million purchase and identified the church as a tenant since 1993.
The Elks were not immediately disappearing from the property. The report described an interim basement arrangement and a planned move into the adjoining building.
“It was a good run but it’s not over,” lodge secretary John Haffney told the newspaper.
That sentence is a better starting point than a simple announcement of decline.
A sale had occurred. The organization continued. The building’s next owner had different purposes and plans for some familiar rooms.
Those are related events, not the same event.
Seven Different Afterlives
“Decline” can describe a broad pattern while concealing what happened to a particular institution.
For this article, seven distinctions are useful.
Closure
An organization formally ends or ceases operating.
The status of its charter, members, assets, and obligations needs to be established under its governing rules. A sold building is not sufficient evidence of closure.
Merger or Consolidation
Two or more bodies combine, or one is absorbed into another.
The terms matter. A successor may preserve a name, number, membership, records, or assets without preserving all of them.
Inactivity or Dormancy
A body may remain on a governing organization’s books without an active public program.
Do not infer formal dormancy from an outdated website or a lack of newspaper notices. Ask the governing institution what status applied.
Relocation
An organization changes meeting place.
A move can accompany expansion, financial retrenchment, temporary disruption, consolidation, or another circumstance. The direction is not self-explanatory.
Adaptive Reuse
A building is used for a different purpose.
That change can begin while the original organization still occupies part of the property.
Demolition
The structure is removed.
This is a different physical outcome from reuse, even when the organization continues elsewhere.
Material and Archival Survival
An emblem, cornerstone, photograph, minute book, or certificate survives an earlier arrangement.
The record may continue after the institution, building, or both have gone.
These distinctions let us investigate change without deciding in advance that every case tells the same story.
Membership Decline and a Growing Borough
There is evidence of substantial long-term decline in a major American Masonic membership series.
The Masonic Service Association of North America’s table reports 4,103,161 for 1959 and 869,429 for 2023.
Those figures require a defined scope. They belong to the Association’s reporting series and should not be described as a census of every American Masonic organization or automatically treated as a count of unique people.
The table also illustrates why figures should be read rather than merely copied: its “Highest Total” label appears beside 1957, although the larger numerical total shown is 1959.
National figures do not establish the course of an individual Queens lodge.
Queens itself had 1,297,634 residents in 1940 and 1,550,849 in 1950, according to New York City’s historical population table.
Its later population history includes both growth and decline.
The useful question is therefore local: what changed in this organization’s membership, finances, meeting arrangements, and purposes?
Borough population alone cannot answer it.
Why There Is No Single Explanation
David T. Beito’s From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State offers an influential interpretation of changes in fraternal assistance.
The publisher’s description identifies its examination of fraternal societies and social services between 1890 and 1967.
Beito’s essay on charity and friendly societies emphasizes pressures involving public provision, insurance regulation, commercial competition, changing attitudes, and organized medicine’s opposition to lodge-based care.
That is an interpretation to investigate, not a universal explanation for every lodge sale.
For a Queens institution, distinguish possible causes:
Changes in membership or dues income.
Maintenance and operating costs.
Property taxes and insurance.
Debt.
Changes in benefit programs.
Competition or changing demand.
A decision to redirect assets.
An opportunity to sell or share space.
A newspaper quotation can document how an officer explained a decision. Accounts, minutes, correspondence, and property records may show how the decision developed.
Hollis: An Old Welfare Institution, an Incomplete Afterlife
The Odd Fellows’ home in Hollis provides a documented example of a fraternal residential institution.
A New York Times report published June 8, 1892 identifies the dedication the previous day of a Long Island Odd Fellows home for aged and poor members.
That contemporary report gives the story a firm point of entry.
Later summaries connect the site with a water-pumping windmill and subsequent changes in use. The compiled history of the Odd Fellows Windmill provides leads to earlier newspaper and government sources.
It should not substitute for checking the sequence of conversion, closure, and demolition.
This article does not repeat the proposed explanation that bureaucratic rules or neighborhood demographic change caused the home’s later closure. That causal account has not been established here.
The institution’s existence and the explanation for its ending are separate historical questions.
Elmhurst: Selling the Main Building Without Ending the Lodge
The Elks building at 82-10 Queens Boulevard was constructed in 1923–24, according to the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s designation report.
The Queens Chronicle sale report attributed the decision to financial pressures, including taxes and reduced membership.
It reported approximately 400 remaining members and a historical peak exceeding 6,000.
Those are attributed newspaper figures, not a verified reconstruction from annual membership returns. They should not be combined indiscriminately with different counts in later retrospectives.
The report also distinguished three stages:
Sale of the principal building.
Continued temporary use of basement space.
A planned move to an adjoining building.
The Elks’ present lodge page identifies Brooklyn Queensborough Lodge No. 878 and publishes meeting information at 82-20 Queens Boulevard.
The address and listing establish a continuing institutional presence.
They do not prove that every earlier facility, program, or membership arrangement continued unchanged.
The Merger Behind the Name
“Brooklyn Queensborough” suggests a combined institutional history, but a compound name should not be treated as sufficient proof.
There is a more specific source.
The September 7, 2010, minutes of Queens Community Board 4 record a presentation by the lodge’s trustee chairman.
The minutes report him describing a merger with Brooklyn Lodge in 2009.
That is documented organizational testimony at a public meeting.
Other historical statements in the same passage are inconsistent with established Elks chronology. The source therefore needs to be used precisely, not accepted wholesale.
The merger’s formal terms, effective date, transferred assets, and treatment of records should be confirmed through Elks proceedings or lodge documents.
Plans Are Not Completed Outcomes
The church’s proposed retention of the bowling alley is an important part of the sale story.
It is not proof of later implementation or current operation.
The same applies to the kitchen, rathskeller, residences, clinic, and other spaces discussed in the report.
For each, distinguish:
Existing use at the time of reporting.
Announced intention.
Approved alteration.
Completed work.
Present use.
The opening scene concerns plans associated with a transaction. A later history of the building requires later evidence.
This is why the bowling alley is more than a charming detail. It shows how easily a proposed afterlife becomes a supposedly documented one.
College Point: A Hall Sale Becomes Charitable Giving
St. Ambrose Council No. 1463 offers a different example.
On April 18, 2021, The Tablet reported that the Knights of Columbus council had recently sold the building where it had gathered since 1971.
Financial secretary Robert Graziano attributed the decision to increased commercial rates and property taxes.
The article documented three gifts:
$50,000 to St. Fidelis.
$50,000 to Holy Trinity.
$10,000 to the Catholic Foundation for Brooklyn and Queens, earmarked for a youth ministry initiative.
The total was $110,000.
The report said most of the proceeds supporting the donations came from the sale.
That establishes a reported transaction and a documented use of funds. It does not establish that the council dissolved or explain its complete subsequent history.
A hall’s sale can redirect an institution’s resources without ending its work.
Forest Hills: Shared Use Before Relocation
Forest Hills provides a reminder that a building need not change from one exclusive purpose to another.
Preservation historian Michael Perlman’s account of the former Forest Hills Masonic Temple reports that Boulevard Bank and Trust Company was to begin sharing the building in 1929.
The same account describes the lodge’s later relocation.
These details remain attributed to a secondary preservation history. They should be checked against contemporary reporting, lodge records, leases, and property documents for a precise chronology.
The important distinction is already clear: institutional and banking uses reportedly overlapped.
“Temple became bank” is therefore too simple.
For the earlier civic context, see A Cornerstone, a Dinner, and a Borough in a Hurry.
Long Island City: Another Elks Building, Another Outcome
The former Elks clubhouse at 21-42 44th Drive had a different afterlife from the Elmhurst building.
A March 2016 DNAinfo report described residents seeking landmark protection.
It quoted Greater Astoria Historical Society historian Bob Singleton on the building’s occupancy history: the Elks, followed by the Knights of Columbus and later the Sheet Metal Workers.
Those are attributed historical statements within contemporary reporting.
On March 21, 2017, DNAinfo reported demolition underway.
That establishes a reported physical outcome after the unsuccessful preservation effort.
Two former homes of the same lodge could therefore have different fates.
It does not follow that designation alone explains every difference between them. Ownership, finances, building condition, legal status, and proposed development all require investigation.
What Landmark Protection Does—and Does Not—Mean
Landmark designation matters, but it is not a promise that a building will remain unchanged.
The Landmarks Preservation Commission’s explanation states that designation requires advance review of alterations, reconstruction, demolition, and new construction affecting designated property.
It also explicitly says designation does not “freeze” a building.
Interior protection depends on the designation and proposed work. An exterior landmark does not automatically preserve every room, fixture, or historic activity.
For a former lodge, distinguish:
Protection of the building.
Survival of particular interior features.
Continuation of the original organization.
Public access.
A new owner’s use.
Those outcomes may intersect. None guarantees the others.
Ridgewood: A Name That Crossed the Borough Line
Ridgewood Lodge No. 710 supplies an official account of institutional change and geographic complication.
The Landmarks Preservation Commission’s 2014 announcement identifies its temple at 1054 Bushwick Avenue in Brooklyn.
The building was constructed in 1919–20.
The announcement explains that the lodge’s name reflected an earlier use of “Ridgewood” for part of present-day Bushwick.
It also states that the lodge later disbanded and joined Astoria Lodge in College Point, Queens, in the early twenty-first century.
That is the Commission’s summary. The precise administrative process and dates require Grand Lodge or lodge records.
It nevertheless establishes an important research problem: a lodge name, meeting address, and successor location can point to different neighborhoods and boroughs.
Searching only present-day Queens geography could miss the Brooklyn records.
Records Do Not Automatically Follow Members
A successor organization is an important place to ask about an absorbed lodge’s papers.
It is not a guarantee that every minute book, account, certificate, or photograph was transferred.
Records may have gone to:
A successor body.
A governing institution.
An individual officer.
A family.
A library or archive.
An unknown destination.
Some may have been lost or discarded.
The transfer of a charter, membership, property, and archives should be investigated separately.
A merger’s administrative survival can conceal an archival break.
Continuing Without Owning a Hall
An institution can meet without owning real estate.
The Rotary Club of South Queens publishes arrangements combining restaurant meetings and virtual meetings.
That is a present-day example, not evidence that the club always operated in the same way.
It shows why building ownership should not be treated as the universal measure of institutional strength.
The reverse is also true: a surviving building does not prove a surviving organization.
A hall, charter, membership, program, and archive have related but separate histories.
Black Fraternal Institutions Need Their Own Afterlife Research
The absence of a completed building history is not evidence that an institution disappeared.
The Prince Hall Grand Lodge of New York’s directory lists Trinity Lodge No. 51 and Lebanon Lodge No. 54 at 107-51 Guy R. Brewer Boulevard in Jamaica.
Those listings establish reported current organizational connections, not a complete property or occupancy history.
This article does not establish their building’s ownership history, earlier meeting places, or the effects of particular financial pressures.
Nor should the experiences of a white lodge be assumed to explain the experience of a Black lodge.
The relevant questions concern the particular institution, its access to property and finance, its membership, and its governing records.
For the earlier history, see The Door That Was Closed.
The Paper Afterlife
When a building disappears, its records may survive.
When the records disappear, a building or object may survive.
Neither outcome is automatic.
A cornerstone can identify a lodge and date. A directory can locate a reported meeting place. A photograph can preserve an emblem. An insurance record can identify a benefit arrangement.
Each documents something different.
Specialist databases, including organ inventories, may provide valuable leads to otherwise overlooked buildings. Their entries still need evaluation: an instrument’s installation date is not necessarily a building’s construction date, and a historical address may require conversion.
An organization’s reputation also survives in stories.
Claims of extraordinary political power, police protection, or secret influence should be attributed and tested—not repeated because they have become familiar.
The previous article’s distinction among shared affiliation, documented contact, and demonstrated action remains useful here.
How to Trace a Defunct Lodge or Vanished Hall
Identify the Exact Body
Record the full name, number, governing jurisdiction, date, and address.
A number without its jurisdiction can mislead. A neighborhood name may describe a different historical geography.
Establish Its Formal Status
Ask whether the body closed, merged, changed name, relocated, or became inactive.
Do not infer its status from a sold property, unanswered website, or missing newspaper coverage.
Search Successor Names
Use old names, numbers, compound names, and reported merger partners.
Ask specifically about transferred records and assets.
Consult Governing Records
Proceedings and administrative files may identify charter actions, consolidations, officers, and locations.
Published proceedings do not necessarily contain complete individual membership lists.
Follow the Property Separately
Deeds, mortgages, leases, and corporate records can identify owners and transactions.
The organization using a hall may not be the legal titleholder.
The Department of Finance’s ACRIS guide explains online property-document access from 1966 onward. Earlier documents require a different search route.
Read the Building
Photograph cornerstones, signs, inscriptions, entrances, and alterations.
A date stone may commemorate construction, dedication, or another event. Establish which.
Use Maps and Photographs
The Municipal Archives’ tax photographs and historical atlases can help connect addresses with structures.
A missing photograph is not proof that no building existed.
Search by Address as Well as Organization
A sale, fire, alteration, or demolition report may identify the building without naming its former lodge.
Try former street names and numbering systems.
Ask the New Occupant
A church, business, community organization, or property owner may preserve fixtures, photographs, or earlier documents.
Treat recollections as evidence to investigate, not automatic confirmation.
Check Cemetery and Family Records
Plots, monuments, programs, and certificates may preserve institutional names after meeting places have changed.
An emblem is a lead, not proof of active membership or a particular benefit.
Record the Source and Date of Every Number
Membership, sale price, taxes, operating costs, and donations describe different things.
Do not combine figures from different years or sources into an apparently precise trend without checking comparability.
The Rest of the Evening
The Elmhurst secretary’s sentence remains the best warning against an automatic elegy:
“It was a good run but it’s not over.”
The reported sale did not end the lodge. The building’s new owner had plans for a different institutional future. Later listings document continued Elks meetings nearby.
Elsewhere, a council turned part of a property sale into donations. A Brooklyn lodge’s history continued through a Queens connection. A former clubhouse entered demolition.
Those are different outcomes.
Their value lies in explaining what continued, what changed, and what was lost—not in deciding that every building sale marked the end of community.
The bowling alley, the bronze elk, the minute book, and the meeting notice each preserve a different part of the story.
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