The Givers
The Givers A YEAR OF SERVICE PAYS OFF FOR SAN FERNANDO LODGE. By Tony Pierucci Above: Members of San Fernando
Wayfinding Your Roots
Mapping the city's historic—and current—Masonic meeting places.
By Ian A. Stewart
In 1847, the Irish-born land surveyor Jasper O’Farrell set out to redraw the map of San Francisco. As part of that, he gave many of the newly made streets their names—including O’Farrell Street—and in so doing, began a long and rich naming tradition that’s probably totally invisible to those outside the craft. But for those in the know, there’s a fraternal link, wink, and nod on just about every other street corner in San Francisco.
1. Birthplace of California Freemasonry
726-728 Montgomery Street
The Genella Building was the site of the first official meeting of California № 13 (later to become № 1) under master Levi Stowell, who carried the charter from Washington, D.C. to California. The lodge held its first meeting there Nov. 15, 1848, but didn’t stay long: By 1850, it had moved into a new hall on Kearny Street, the second of six meeting places in its first century.
2. San Francisco Hall
Washington Street between Kearny and Montgomery
The third meeting place of California № 1, this was another short-lived home, a two-story brick building on the south side of Washington that also served as a theater, in the shadow of where the Transamerica Pyramid is today. By 1853, the lodge was meeting at the “New” Masonic Temple on Montgomery Street (See below). San Francisco № 7, Occidental № 22, and La Parfaite Union № 17 also met on Washington Street in 1852–53, and the Annual Communication was held there in 1852 and 1855.
3. “New” Masonic Hall
110–112 Montgomery Street
Completed in July 1853, this four-story hall was owned by Samuel Brannan, one of the most colorful characters in San Francisco history. Brannan originally landed in California on a mission to launch a Mormon colony here but broke with the church, opened a mining store, and became the richest man in San Francisco. Brannan petitioned Occidental № 22 for membership in 1855 but was denied. It wasn’t until 1855 that he was accepted into the lodge that he’d once been landlord of.
4. Reese Building
722 Washington Street
The Masonic hall on the third floor of the brick structure known as Reese’s Building, at the corner of Portsmouth Square, was in 1861 home to several lodges including La Parfaite Union № 17, Golden Gate № 30, Mt. Moriah № 49, Fidelity № 120, and Oriental № 144—the latter of which split from Occidental in 1860 at the dawn of the Civil War, the result of an intralodge dispute pitting northerners (who affiliated with Oriental) against their Southern lodge brothers.
5. Grand Lodge Temple
6 Post Street
Construction on the first permanent home for the Grand Lodge, at Post and Montgomery, began in 1860 and was finished in 1870. Designed by architects Reuben Clark (of Mount Moriah № 44) and Henry Kenitzer (of Fidelity № 120), the three-story Italian-Gothic structure, which served 10 blue lodges and virtually all the other Masonic bodies in the city, was crowned by a 128-foot tower above Montgomery Street. Grand Master William Belcher in 1863 declared: “This is the finest and most perfect building upon the Pacific coast.” However, by the time it was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake, both the city and fraternity had outgrown it: During its lifespan, the fraternity had grown from 6,000 members in San Francisco to more than 33,000.
6. Golden Gate Hall
625 Sutter Street
Another early and relatively short-lived meeting place, this belonged to Golden Gate Commandery № 16 of the Knights Templar, one of two early commanderies in the city, which launched in 1883. In 1891, the group raised $130,000 to construct the temple, and the San Francisco City Directory first lists it meeting there in 1896. However, by 1904, the group was once again on the move, eventually relocating to 2135 Sutter. The Golden Gate Hall, which was also used as a theater, hosted several blue lodges, including California № 1, Mt. Moriah № 44, Doric № 216, and Jewel № 374. It was destroyed in 1906.
7. Bayview Opera House
4705 Third Street
When in 1888 the members of South San Francisco № 212 dedicated the cornerstone for their new lodge in what’s now called the Bayview, the neighborhood was known as Butchertown, a motley assortment of farms and slaughterhouses. So it might have registered as curious the decision to erect, immediately adjacent to the new hall, an elaborate Italianate-style opera hall (above) designed by Henry Geilfuss, one of the most prolific architects of the era. During the late 19th century, the remote opera hall became a major cultural institution. The lodge sold the building in 1965 and consolidated into Francis Drake-South San Francisco № 212. In recent years, the opera house has undergone a significant renovation and today hosts several community groups and theater companies.
8. Masonic Cemetery
Between Turk, Fulton, Parker, and Masonic Streets
The 38-acre gravesite on Lone Mountain— one of the “Big Four” cemeteries at what’s now the University of San Francisco—once served 20,000 souls. Among its notable headstones were prominent San Francisco Masons including the sugar king Adolph B. Spreckles and Munroe Ashbury, an early champion of Golden Gate Park. In the wake of the 1906 earthquake, the cemetery was shuttered, part of a citywide effort to re-inter San Francisco’s dead elsewhere. However, its legacy remains: It’s estimated that only a quarter of its dead were ever moved.
9. B'Nai B'rith Building
149 Eddy Street
For several years before and after the 1906 earthquake and fire, a number of Masonic lodges shared space with the Jewish fraternal organization B’Nai B’rith in their lodge hall in the Tenderloin. Among those groups were Pacific № 136, Crockett № 139, and Doric № 216, and, in the 1920s and beyond, Military Service № 570, Bethlehem № 453, Lincoln № 470, Roosevelt № 500, and Fairmont № 435.
10. Palace Hotel
2 New Montgomery Street
The Palace Hotel is one of the most august institutions in downtown San Francisco, tracing its history to 1875, when it was considered not just the greatest hotel in San Francisco, but in the West. It also has a close connection to Freemasonry: In 1916, the fraternity opened the Masonic Club of San Francisco inside the hotel, taking over the entire west wing of the second floor of the building. Inside were eight rooms practically dripping in luxury, plus a dining room, billiards room, and card room, all in addition to the main clubhouse. The hotel also reserved several hotel rooms for Masonic Club members and their guests. Its initial membership numbered 1,700, including bold-faced names like William H. Crocker, son of the Southern Pacific Railroad fortune. The club was born out of Bethlehem № 453, and during World War I, it helped organize the Masonic Ambulance Corps, a volunteer company that deployed to the Argonne.
11. D. Norcross Masonic Goods
6 Post Street
In the late 19th century, as Masonry was taking off in San Francisco, business unsurprisingly followed. Beginning in the 1860s, several Masonic goods retailers popped up downtown offering lodge furnishings, Masonic regalia, costumes, and more. One of the largest of these was Daniel Norcross Masonic Goods, relocated from Sacramento Street to the Grand Lodge temple at 6 Post Street. Norcross was a member of Oriental № 144. He certainly wasn’t the only one in the business: The Johnson T. Rogers Masonic Goods Co. set up stakes in the 1860s, while AJ Plate and Co. Masonic Goods hawked its wares from 325 Montgomery. CF Weber and Co. came in the 1910s, while a West Coast outpost of the Henderson- Ames Lodge Paraphernalia Co. formed in 1920 at 833 Market Street. In the 1940s, ABC Emblem & Pennant Co. at 1251 Market Street was similarly advertising Masonic regalia.
12. Thomas Starr King Statue
JFK Drive, Golden Gate Park
Though he lived in San Francisco for just four years, Rev. Thomas Starr King is remembered as the man who “saved California for the Union” during the Civil War. A preacher at First Unitarian Church, he earned fame for his speeches against slavery. Starr King, who joined Oriental № 144 in 1861, served as Grand Orator for the Grand Lodge of California in 1864, the year he died. In 1892, a memorial fund was raised to erect a statue of him by Daniel Chester French (designer of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.) in Golden Gate Park. More than 2,000 people attended the opening, including King’s grandsons.
13. Emperor Norton Place
600 Commercial Place
San Francisco’s most celebrated 19th century eccentric, Joshua Norton was a failed businessman turned beloved prophet. He roamed the streets in a faded military costume and proclaimed himself Emperor Norton I (below), penning missives proposing, among other things, a bridge connecting San Francisco to Oakland and an underwater streetcar tube traversing the bay—a century before those came into being. A member of Occidental № 22, Norton died penniless, but today is remembered as a hero.
14. Golden Gate Commandery No. 16
2135 Sutter Street
After decamping from Golden Gate Hall, Golden Gate Commandery № 16 met from 1905–1949 in this Matthew O’Brien and Carl Werner-designed temple in the Western Addition. The imposing building, built in the socalled “Jacobean phase of the Medieval Revival” style, also hosted several blue lodges, including Occidental № 22, Argonaut № 461, Bethlehem № 453, Educator № 554, and Military Service № 570. That was only the beginning of the building’s history, though: In 1950, it was taken over by Macedonia Baptist Church, an influential Civil Rights-era institution where Martin Luther King twice gave speeches.
15. King Solomon's Temple
1739 Fillmore Street
The meeting place of King Solomon’s № 260 had only just opened in 1906 when the massive earthquake and fire damaged nearly 80 percent of the city. At that point, the lodge became the de-facto headquarters from which San Francisco Masonic Relief Board President William Frank Pierce organized the disaster response. From there, he and dozens of Masonic volunteers gathered food and goods and raised money for the more-than-50 percent of the city that had been displaced. In all, California Masons distributed more than $300,000 (more than $10 million today), and handed out 74,200 food rations over 43 days.
16. Swedish-American Hall
2174 Market Street
The number of Scandinavian people doubled in San Francisco between 1900 and 1910, mostly near Market Street and Dolores. Smack dab in the center of it was the Swedish- American Hall, built in 1908 and home to several social and fraternal groups including, from 1908 until 1987, Balder № 393, named for the Norse god of light. Initially the lodge aimed to work in Swedish (as similar French, Italian, and Germanspeaking lodges did at the time in San Francisco), but ultimately settled on English.
17. First Public School Monument
Portsmouth Square
On Sept. 25, 1957, Masonic dignitaries and city officials gathered to dedicate a plaque recognizing the location of the city’s first public school, a one-room schoolhouse opened in 1848 by the Afro-Cuban businessman William Leidesdorff. “Here churches held their first meetings, and here the first public amusements were given,” read Grand Master Harold Anderson. “Not a vestige of the old relic now remains and its site is only recognized by a thousand cherished associations that hover like spirits around its unmarked grave.”
18. Albert Pike Memorial Temple
1858 Geary Street
Originally built in 1905 by the Scottish Rite, the temple at Geary near Fillmore had scarcely been opened in time for the 1906 quake. The building, along with its neighbor, the Temple Beth Israel synagogue, were both badly damaged, but were rebuilt. In the 1960s, when the new Scottish Rite temple on 19th Avenue was opened, the Pike Memorial was left vacant, and in 1971 it was taken over by the infamous Rev. Jim Jones for his People’s Temple—just seven years prior to the Jonestown Massacre.
19. Richmond Masonic Temple
405 Arguello Boulevard
Many of the fraternal flourishes remain inside the 1908 Richmond Masonic Temple, designed by Hermann Barth, architect of the city’s German Hospital. However, the most striking details are not part of the original design at all: In 1936, Bernard J. Joseph renovated the building’s exterior in a Mayan Deco theme, with engraved paneling along the parapet. The temple was once home to Richmond № 375 and later Lebanon № 495 and Seal Rock № 536. Today it’s a fitness gym.
20. George Washington Temple
542 San Juan Avenue
The cornerstone for the future home of George Washington № 525 was laid on Feb. 22, 1923, the birthday of the nation’s first president and just a few months before the dedication of the George Washington Masonic National Monument in Virginia. The San Francisco lodge was somewhat more modest; a three-story edifice in Mission Terrace, near the current City College of San Francisco. In 1974, the lodge began a series of consolations, eventually folding into Brotherhood № 370. The old temple is now a Korean Evangelical church.
21. Taraval Temple
2400 14th Avenue
Still used by Golden Gate Speranza № 30 and Phoenix № 144, the temple, variously known as the Golden Gate Masonic Temple and Taraval Temple, was first built in 1928, possibly as a Knights of Columbus hall. By 1929, however, it was being used by the Parkside Masonic Association, a group of Masons living in the Sunset/Parkside neighborhood. That group eventually formed Far West № 673 and by the 1940s was sharing space with Mt. Moriah № 44, Paul Revere № 462, and Seaport № 550— lodges that, over the years, have variously consolidated into the two extant bodies.
22. Park Masonic Hall
1748 Haight Street
Right in the heart of the Haight-Ashbury district that birthed the hippie movement, the Park Masonic Hall was opened in 1915 to serve Park № 449. Over the years, it also hosted Victory № 474, Bethlehem № 453, and others. But by the early ’60s, the Masons had left the building, which was later taken over as the I-Beam, the legendary gay dance club, until the 1990s.
23. Mt. Davidson Lodge
385 Ashton Avenue
The first meeting spot for Mt. Davidson № 481 opened in 1925 just off Ocean Avenue to serve as a “West of Twin Peaks” community lodge. As the city spread outward, the hall began hosting other lodges, too, including Mt. Vernon № 517, Educator № 554, and Ingleside № 630. Today the building remains intact and is occupied by a yoga studio.
24. Prince Hall Hannibal No. 1
2804 Bush Street
Prince Hall Masonry has been a fixture in San Francisco since 1852 with the formation of Hannibal № 1. Originally, three Prince Hall lodges met in North Beach. After the earthquake, Hannibal relocated to the Western Addition, which became the center of the city’s Black population, first setting up at 1547 Steiner and finally, in the 1940s, relocating to its current, unassuming spot on Bush Street.
25. Shriner's Hospital
1601 19th Avenue
The San Francisco Shriner’s Hospital was built in 1922 as the order’s third-ever medical center. Designed by the firm of Weeks and Day (of the Mark Hopkins Hotel), the Italian Renaissance-style hospital accepted young patients for a range of surgeries and physical therapy. North and south wings were added in 1929, and in the 1960s an extension was built to its west. In 1997, with the opening of the new hospital in Sacramento, the San Francisco branch was sold. Today, following an extensive retrofit, it’s in use as an assisted living facility.
26. California Masonic Memorial Temple
1111 California Street
The current home of the Masons of California, the CMMT plays host to more than 250,000 visitors each year, thanks largely to its 3,300-seat auditorium, which has hosted performances from the likes of Bob Dylan and Ella Fitzgerald. Opened in 1958, the 50,000-squarefoot temple, clad in Vermont marble, was designed by Albert F. Roller, of Excelsior № 166, who also built the Scottish Rite Temple on 19th Avenue. A “Modernist marvel,” the CMMT was designed to evince “no stylized tradition or cliché.” The most notable ornamentation is the artist Emile Norman’s massive “endomosaic” window made of crushed glass and other material, pressed between panels of acrylic. In 2019, the CMMT opened Freemasons’ Hall, the firstever lodge room inside the temple, where today eight different lodges meet.
27. Scottish Rite Masonic Center
2850 19th Avenue
Opened in 1963, the current home of the Scottish Rite was also designed by Albert Roller. Many of the striking artworks at the building, including the exterior mosaic, double-headed eagle, and interior murals, were executed by Millard Sheets, the influential artist and architect. In addition to its use by the Scottish Rite bodies, the auditorium is one of the city’s best-known venues for weddings, graduations, and other large celebrations.
28. Gran Oriente Filipino
74 Jack London Alley
Still standing today, the Gran Oriente Filipino Masonic Temple traces its beginnings to 1921, when a group of merchant marines organized the first California chapter of that Masonic organization. The group served as a community anchor for the first great wave of Filipino workers in California. In the 1930s, they purchased a residential hotel on South Park and eventually built a temple, home to Rizal № 12. That group continues to meet there, and though it has just a few remaining members, it stands as a testament to Filipino and Masonic history in the city.
Illustration by:
San Dimas Rotary Foundation
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