Forged in Fire

Writing a year after the 1906 earthquake and fire—after more than 3,000 San Franciscans had perished and more than 200,000 had been left homeless, R.W. Meek, president of the Oakland Masonic Board of Relief, recalled the morning’s eerie silence. “The day had dawned as calm and peaceful as a summer’s dream,” he wrote. “Yet there was an oppression, a feeling of unrest, a horror of something that was about to happen but could not be foretold.”

The magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck the city like a jolt, collapsing entire neighborhoods south of Market Street. The fires that followed leveled other areas, including practically the entire eastern half of the city. The Army corps, hoping to create a firebreak, dynamited buildings downtown, leading to further fires. Caught up in the blazes was the Grand Lodge temple at the corner of Post, Montgomery, and Market streets. The building was damaged during the early-morning quake but still standing. And indeed, many members of the Grand Chapter of the Royal Arch gathered there as part of their annual convocation, only to evacuate as the building was engulfed in flames.

Almost everything inside was destroyed, including the records of the 14 lodges that met there. According to John Whitsell’s history of Masonry in California, a janitor named H.G. Frederickson, who lived at the temple, rescued what he could. “With rare presence of mind,” Whitsell writes, “he secured the charters and jewels of his lodge, Mount Moriah № 44, and the charter and jewels of Golden Gate Lodge № 30, wrapped them in a blanket with his personal belongings, and took them to a safe place.… Almost a year later, the same brother was watching the workmen cleaning up the lot on which the temple stood and, there in the rubbish, he saw the partially smashed and blackened plumb, level and 24-inch gauge of his lodge.”

Today, the Henry W. Coil Museum and Library of Freemasonry contains some of the jewels and other remains from the temple in its archive—a reminder of the city’s darkest days, and the ashes from which it would eventually rebuild and reinvent itself.