I recently wrote about the former Oddfellows Hall downtown, but there’s another fraternal organization in the area with a much larger membership, the Freemasons.
And compared to Oddfellows temple that is unrecognizable from what it once was, Dayton’s Masonic Temple (now officially known as Dayton Masonic Center) remains intact as one of the area’s most significant architectural treasures.
The story of the building’s construction is nearly as monumental as the structure itself.
After World War I, major growth of the Masonic community required a new lodge building, and leaders “conceived the idea of a new Masonic Center located on the hill at Belmonte Park North and Riverview Avenue.”
The group in charge of the new building was a Masonic Temple Association made up of 14 different Masonic groups. It raised an incredible $1.5 million from the community in just 10 days in 1924, and ground was broken on July 20, 1925.
The majority of the 450 construction workers were Masons, who constructed the temple over a period of 2 years and 9 months. The Grecian design is by Dayton firm Herman & Brown.
The $2.5 million project would translate to about $30 million to build today, and even then “it is doubtful if the Temple could be duplicated today in view of the fact that many materials used in the original construction of the Temple are now quite scarce, if available at all.” Those materials included 55,000 cubic feet of Bedford stone and 15,000 cubic feet of hard limestone as well as enough Vermont, Alabama and Tennessee marble to fill 20 train cars. The Ionic columns on the front facade are one of the building’s most striking features.
And the grandiosity of the building certainly is not limited to the exterior. That marble, for one, is seen in the floors, wainscoting, partitions, and stairs.
The interior reportedly contains no fewer than 250 different rooms, and an article even describes a story of a worker discovering a hidden room that had been forgotten for decades: “A window washer, while working outside, noticed one of the rooms didn’t have a door. No one had been aware of this at the time. Builders broke through a wall and corrected the situation.”
The building’s huge main theater seats 1,800, making it larger than the Victoria Theatre. It is often used by other local groups in addition to holding Masonic gatherings. It also features an Æolian-Skinner pipe organ with 4,385 pipes, one of seven pipe organs in the building.
An article also shared that “the stage’s backdrop is massive, weighing in at 2,000 pounds. It takes approximately 45 minutes to lower the theater’s chandelier for cleaning.”
Earlier Masonic History and Buildings in Dayton
Dayton’s first Masonic Lodge was founded back in 1808, and at that time it was located in the first Montgomery County Courthouse.
Later, a long-lost church became home to the St. John’s Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons No. 13, which had been chartered in 1812. This was the First Lutheran Church on Main Street in between Fourth and Fifth, which was built in 1859.
The Masons began using it in 1907 until the grand Masonic Temple was completed, soon after which the church was demolished. The rest of the block followed suit during urban renewal and the site is now part of Levitt Pavilion.
Current Masonic Center Site Before Construction and Today
The temple is an architectural marvel, as is its neighbor the Dayton Art Institute, but it’s worth noting that their construction resulted in the loss of some fine early mansions connected to some prominent Daytonians.
The location where the Dayton Masonic Center now stands was the Stoddard mansion for John W Stoddard, who founded a farm implement firm that became the Dayton Motor Car Company.
And more recently, two nearby homes, The Jones and Hosier Houses, were slated to be demolished in 2015 for a parking expansion for the Masonic Center.
But a preservation effort by Dan Barton and the Grafton Hill Community Development Corp. was able to reach a deal to instead move them to empty lots in Grafton. They were “the first relocated structures in the nation to retain their National Register status and to qualify for historic tax credits.”
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