Queens History and Freemasonry / Springfield Gardens Series / Woodhull Lodge No. 982
Part of the Springfield Gardens Lodge series · A meeting-place history for Freemason Buildings of Queens
Main Feature: Nine Lodges, One Living History · Series Overview · Masonic Buildings
Some lodges are remembered by the temples they built. No temple owned or commissioned by Woodhull Lodge No. 982 has been identified in the research assembled here. Its surviving meeting-place references tell another story: a lodge sustained in other institutions’ rooms.
November 10, 2026 · By Brete Murphy
A Building Series Wants a Building
For Woodhull Lodge No. 982, the search has not produced a temple of its own.
That absence shapes the story.
Woodhull organized in 1921 and continued as a separate lodge until its merger with Jamaica Lodge in 1985, according to the author’s consolidation research.
Its members included men whose careers reached beyond the lodge room, and its Past Masters participated in district leadership.
Yet the material assembled for this article does not identify Woodhull as the owner or builder of a Masonic hall.
What survives instead is a sequence of places where its members assembled.
Those references reveal a distinction that a building series can easily overlook.
A lodge could maintain its identity without placing its own name over a separately owned door.
Woodhull’s institutional line later entered Springfield Gardens through Jamaica and Jamaica-Queens Village.
The larger sequence appears in Springfield Gardens Lodge No. 1057: Nine Lodges, One Living History.
Room One: The Jamaica Temple
Woodhull began in Jamaica’s Masonic Temple on Union Avenue.
On January 6, 1921, the Brooklyn Daily Times reported that the new lodge had been organized there the previous day.
The newspaper called Jamaica Lodge No. 546 its parent.
Woodhull’s officers were installed at the temple in January 1922.
A district visitation schedule published in January 1925 placed Woodhull at the Masonic Temple on Union Avenue for the district deputy’s February 19 visit.
In February 1929, Master Frederick G. Haubitzer conferred the Entered Apprentice degree on five candidates “at Jamaica Masonic Temple.”
These references establish repeated Woodhull use of the Jamaica building during the 1920s.
They do not supply a lease, rental schedule or complete calendar of occupancy.
The Later Jamaica Reference
The relationship remained visible decades afterward.
In 1957, a Woodhull Past Master’s commissioning as district deputy was associated with the Jamaica temple, by then identified as 89-31 162nd Street.
That event connects Woodhull with the building in a later period.
It does not, by itself, prove that every regular meeting between 1929 and 1957 occurred there.
The strongest conclusion is narrower: Jamaica was Woodhull’s principal documented meeting place in the material supplied, and it remained a venue for an important Woodhull-related occasion decades later.
An Established Building
The New York City Organ Project’s Jamaica temple record identifies the Masonic Temple on Union Avenue and documents its Möller organ.
That evidence concerns the building and its equipment.
It does not establish Woodhull’s occupancy terms, but it helps describe the setting available to the new lodge: an existing Masonic institution with rooms and facilities already in use.
Woodhull did not have to begin by constructing them.
The Jamaica building should not be confused with Cornucopia’s former temple in Flushing. Both histories involve a street named Union, but they concern different communities and properties.
For that separate building, read The Flushing Masonic Temple: A Corner Built to Last.
Room Two: The Hollis Question
One reference in the earlier Woodhull research points east.
The manuscript cites The Chat of February 13, 1926, reporting that a Prosperity Lodge delegation visited Woodhull “at the Masonic Temple in Hollis.”
It also places the district deputy’s official visit there.
The later Springfield Gardens dossier, however, states that the packet does not establish a Woodhull connection with the Hollis temple.
Those statements conflict.
Until the original clipping is checked, the Hollis event should remain a qualified reference—not be silently removed or expanded into a documented relocation.
A Temple in Hollis
Hollis did have a Masonic temple.
The New York City Organ Project’s Queens index records one on 191st Street, between Jamaica and Woodhull avenues.
It identifies a Möller organ, Opus 4156, dated 1924, and a later use by the Beraca Seventh-day Adventist congregation.
The organ date establishes an instrument associated with the temple. It is not, by itself, proof of the building’s construction year.
Hollis also had its own lodge and Masonic association.
In November 1920, the Brooklyn Daily Times reported that the association was meeting in an Episcopal parish hall on Woodhull Avenue.
A January 1925 district schedule placed Hollis Lodge at a Masonic Temple on Minnetonka Avenue.
Minnetonka Avenue and 191st Street
The author’s research identifies Minnetonka Avenue as the earlier name of 191st Street.
A photograph catalogued in 2014 as “Former Masonic Temple, Hollis” gives the building as 91-19 191st Street, notes the earlier street name and assigns a 1924 date.
Those references point toward the same property.
The precise address history and construction date should still be checked against maps and building records.
Even if the February 1926 Woodhull notice is confirmed, identifying the venue does not establish how frequently the lodge used it.
A Visit or a Regular Home?
The cited account would establish a Woodhull event in Hollis.
It would not establish a complete occupancy period.
Woodhull may have used the temple regularly for a time, or the report may describe an occasional venue.
Neither interpretation is yet proved.
For now, Jamaica remains the principal documented setting in the supplied Woodhull references. Hollis remains an additional venue requiring confirmation from the cited clipping.
Why No Separate Temple?
No source assembled for this article answers that question directly.
Several possibilities arise from the record.
Woodhull began with a relationship to Jamaica Lodge and repeatedly used its established temple.
A separate Hollis lodge and Masonic association were already arranging accommodation in that neighborhood.
Members’ notices connect Woodhull with Jamaica, Hollis, Queens Village and Springfield Gardens rather than with only one small district.
Those circumstances may have made shared premises practical.
They do not establish why Woodhull’s officers chose particular rooms, whether a building fund was proposed or whether a purchase was considered and abandoned.
A lack of construction notices is not evidence of financial weakness.
Nor should the use of another lodge’s temple be described as rent-free borrowing unless the terms are known.
Woodhull’s members may have been tenants, shared users or guests for particular occasions.
The documents needed to distinguish those arrangements have not been located.
Other Lodges, Different Choices
The Springfield Gardens lineage contains several property histories.
Hillside organized a holding company and commissioned a temple in Woodhaven.
Dunton’s Masonic Club began a clubhouse before Dunton Lodge received its charter.
Springfield Gardens’ organizers built a hall intended for fraternal and civic use.
Woodhull’s identified record is different.
Its history is found chiefly through notices placing the lodge inside another institution’s premises.
That is a contrast in the surviving evidence, not a ranking of institutional achievement.
Compare The Hillside Temple in Woodhaven and Dunton Masonic Temple: A Clubhouse Before a Lodge.
A Lodge Is Not Its Real Estate
Woodhull complicates a history organized around cornerstones.
A purpose-built temple can leave drawings, permits, dedication reports and inscriptions.
A lodge using another institution’s rooms may leave traces scattered through calendars, installation notices, degree reports and funeral announcements.
Its history can therefore be substantial while its physical footprint is difficult to isolate.
Woodhull demonstrates that problem.
The absence of an identified temple does not make the lodge an absence in Queens history.
It changes where the historian must look.
The building belongs to one institution. A meeting notice records another institution working inside it.
Back into Jamaica
According to the author’s compilation of Grand Lodge records, Woodhull merged into Jamaica Lodge in 1985.
The union joined it with the institution described as its parent in the 1921 organizing report.
There is a narrative symmetry in that relationship.
It should not be stretched into a claim that Woodhull continuously occupied the same building throughout its separate existence.
The merger establishes institutional succession.
The meeting-place history still contains gaps.
The Route to Springfield Gardens
Jamaica later combined with the Suburban-Queens Village branch to form Jamaica-Queens Village Lodge No. 546 in 1998.
That lodge entered Springfield Gardens Lodge No. 1057 in 2013, according to the supplied consolidation research.
Woodhull’s route into the continuing lodge was therefore indirect:
Woodhull → Jamaica → Jamaica-Queens Village → Springfield Gardens.
This sequence does not mean that Woodhull remained separately active after 1985.
It means its institutional lineage continued through the combined bodies.
For the complete framework, read Springfield Gardens Lodge No. 1057: Nine Lodges, One Living History.
The Missing Temple Is a Research Question
The title’s search is not for a building known to have vanished.
It is for evidence that Woodhull ever maintained property of its own—and for a fuller account of the rooms it used when it did not.
So far, the record points principally to Jamaica.
The cited Hollis reference requires comparison with the original clipping.
That is enough to make Woodhull part of a building history.
Its story reminds us that a temple could serve more institutions than the name on its cornerstone, and that a lodge’s continuity did not depend on owning the walls around its meetings.
Sources and Research Notes
Newspaper references follow the author’s supplied clippings and manuscripts. Direct article URLs were not provided, so publication names and dates are preserved rather than assigned speculative links.
Woodhull in Jamaica
“New Masonic Lodge Formed at Jamaica,” Brooklyn Daily Times, January 6, 1921, p. 4. Organization on January 5 at Jamaica’s temple and the description of Jamaica Lodge as Woodhull’s parent.
Brooklyn Eagle, January 14, 1922, p. 20. Officers’ installation.
Brooklyn Daily Times, January 4, 1925, p. 19. District visitation schedule identifying Woodhull at the Masonic Temple on Union Avenue for February 19.
The Chat, February 16, 1929, p. 5. Entered Apprentice degree at the Jamaica Masonic Temple.
“Nichols to Be Named Master,” Daily News, June 30, 1957, p. 248. Woodhull-related district-deputy commissioning and the Jamaica temple address. The original notice should be consulted for the precise event wording and date.
New York City Organ Project, Masonic Temple—Jamaica. Temple and organ history. This source does not establish Woodhull’s rental or occupancy terms.
The Hollis Reference
The Chat, February 13, 1926, p. 13, as cited in the earlier Woodhull manuscript. Prosperity delegation and official district visit to Woodhull at a Masonic Temple in Hollis. The later series dossier questions whether this connection is established; the original clipping must resolve the conflict.
New York City Organ Project, Organs in the Borough of Queens. Hollis temple on 191st Street, Möller Opus 4156 dated 1924, and later church use.
“Hollis Masons to Meet,” Brooklyn Daily Times, November 18, 1920, p. 9. Hollis Masonic Association’s use of an Episcopal parish hall on Woodhull Avenue.
Brooklyn Daily Times, January 4, 1925, p. 19. Hollis Lodge’s temple address on Minnetonka Avenue.
“Former Masonic Temple, Hollis,” Flickr photograph catalogued in 2014, as identified in the author’s research. Address given as 91-19 191st Street, with the earlier Minnetonka Avenue name and a 1924 building date. Its direct page, source of dating and reproduction license require confirmation.
Brooklyn Daily Times, November 23, 1929, p. 5. Hollis Lodge No. 992 reference.
Membership and Consolidation
Woodhull members’ notices, 1926–1934, in the Brooklyn Eagle and Brooklyn Daily Times. Geographic examples, not a complete membership survey.
Grand Lodge of New York records, as compiled by Brete Murphy. Woodhull’s 1985 merger into Jamaica.
Author’s Springfield Gardens lineage dossier. Jamaica-Queens Village’s 1998 formation and its 2013 consolidation into Springfield Gardens.
A Note on the Evidence
No temple owned or commissioned by Woodhull has been identified in the research presented here.
That is a finding about the available evidence, not proof that no such property ever existed.
Repeated Jamaica references do not establish uninterrupted tenancy.
The 1957 ceremony is not used as proof of Woodhull’s regular meeting location throughout that decade.
The Hollis reference remains qualified because the earlier manuscript and later dossier differ on whether it is established.
Even a confirmed 1926 event would not establish a complete relocation.
The Hollis organ’s 1924 date is not automatically the building’s construction date.
The reasons for Woodhull’s use of shared premises remain unexplained by a direct contemporary source.
No claim is made that its accommodation was free, that it lacked resources to consider ownership, or that every predecessor record is physically held by Springfield Gardens.
Questions for Further Research
- What do annual Grand Lodge directories give as Woodhull’s meeting address?
- Do Woodhull or Jamaica minutes record rental or room-sharing arrangements?
- What exactly does the February 13, 1926 Hollis report say?
- Did Woodhull use the Hollis temple beyond that event?
- Was a Woodhull temple fund, purchase proposal or building committee ever organized?
- Do property records identify Woodhull, its trustees or an associated holding company?
- Which rooms in Jamaica’s temple did Woodhull use?
- What were the precise terms and date of the 1985 merger?
- Where are Woodhull’s surviving records?
Research Gateways
The Brooklyn Public Library’s Brooklyn Newsstand provides information about historic newspaper access.
The NYC Automated City Register Information System provides a starting point for recorded property-document research. A complete search may require earlier records and related legal-entity names.
The NYC Municipal Archives provides information about historical city records and photographic collections.
These are research gateways, not direct links to the individual clippings or unidentified property records.
Continue the Springfield Gardens Series
The Main Feature
Springfield Gardens Lodge No. 1057: Nine Lodges, One Living History
Follow Woodhull’s route through Jamaica and Jamaica-Queens Village into the continuing lodge.
The Series Overview
Open the Springfield Gardens Lodge series
Find the companion lodge histories, building articles and consolidation research.
A Lodge That Built Its Own Hall
The Hillside Temple in Woodhaven
Compare Woodhull’s meeting-place record with a nearby lodge’s construction and enlargement campaign.
A Clubhouse Before a Lodge
Dunton Masonic Temple: A Clubhouse Before a Lodge
Explore a different route to establishing a neighborhood Masonic home.
Related Queens Building Histories
Two Buildings for One Lodge
Tadmor’s Two Masonic Temples: From Fresh Pond Road to Summerfield Street
Follow a lodge from an adapted property to a purpose-built temple.
Shared Rooms in College Point
Anchor-Astoria Masonic Temple: Four Lodges, One Door in College Point
Discover a building that continues to accommodate several distinct lodges.
Return to the Springfield Gardens Main Feature · Springfield Gardens Series Overview
Masonic Buildings in Queens · Lodge Histories · Queens History and Freemasonry
