Big, Beautiful, Stainless Steel
Ah, the Masonic Temple
I got a call from a Brother yesterday morning. It seemed that the delivery guys had shown up quite a bit earlier than planned, so I needed to run down to our Lodge’s building to let them in.
I did, and they filled our kitchen with brand spankin’ new, shiny stainless steel. The good stuff that is slated to replace an awful lot of old plywood cabinetry. We’re going modern.
We are blessed with a big, beautiful Masonic Temple, and we are further blessed with stable long term commercial tenants.
But, we are also cursed.
We are cursed because the men who built our Temple, at a time when Freemasonic membership was exploding, made absolutely zero provision for its maintenance into the future.
We are also cursed because the need for ongoing maintenance was ignored decade, after decade, after decade. The building was allowed to simply decay.
When I first moved here and joined this Lodge, the men of the Lodge decided that ignoring the building’s needs was no longer sustainable. That the building needed to be fixed, one way or the other.
Now of course we had no money to speak of, so that was, and is, much more easily said than done.
But slowly, over the past fifteen years or so, we’ve managed to improve the place. Quite substantially actually. Not bad for a bunch of amateurs.
This partial remodel of our large kitchen is just the latest step.
But I don’t know if we will be able to actually save the building.
Costs rise faster than income, and we were never flush to begin with.
The structure seems to deteriorate faster than we can fix it.
I imagine that this exact same quandary is had by Lodges around the country. I certainly hope that we can save our wonderful old Temple, but looking at it unemotionally, I just can’t be sure.
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Older historic buildings are my jam. The architectural historic fabric of places often gives you sturdier structures that are passively self cooling and self warming because they were originally oriented for that purpose and the room dimensions including ceiling height and materials themselves, particularly plaster, provide a condensation surface that helps to warm and cool rooms. Windows that open and close provide ventilation and often central ventilation shafts do as well (in spite of being firefighters worst nightmares). These types of building scan be replastered, repointed, insulated with modern rock wool, rewired replumbed, and re-roofed with steel that looks like the old tiles but provides fire protection. But - that's money that should have been accumulated over the years and often wasn't.
Infrastructure is always an ongoing expense. If you build with the idea that it will still be standing in good order in 500 years and that maintenance will be routine, that's a much different proposition than tossing up tongue depressors and Elmer's glue tract houses mean to generate obscene profits for developers/builders, and to extract wealth, funnel it away from the Middle Class in the form of debt slavery, and be disposable in 15 years.
The good thing is, the older the structure is, the better it was built in the first place. Roman roads still function in many places because of the way they were built.
The downside is that even the old Roman buildings that still self heal because they were built with Roman concrete, which interestingly seems to resist earthquake damage as well, deteriorated from their once splendour.
We have no trade schools anymore. If we did, then maintaining older historically important buildings would be easier because apprecti ce bricklayers, plasterers, stonemasons, etc. would be available for work under supervision of Masters. Also, hotter longer summers and more wildfires, means that materials that once served well, may not anymore. But, some will.
Some things are not done because its logical or feasible, but because it is inspiring and necessary... or an obsession. I remember some of the rustbuckets (classic cars) we used to get, sometimes feeling we payed/traded more than felt prudent at the time, only to convert it into something unrecognizable.
They are definitely a labor of love, but there is nothing quite like them when you finally get everything dialed in. The sound, the feel, and the experience is unlike anything else, and each one is unique.
I get much the same feeling when I walk through these old Temples. The energy a space accumulates over time cannot be conveyed without experiencing it first hand. It also, unfortunately, cannot be transferred to a new space, not in its entirety anyway. Or at least not in my experience.
It would be a shame to lose another piece of Masonic history and the Legacy attached to it. I think if more Lodges considered thinking outside the box they may find the answer is in their communities. I think if Lodges were to partner with their youth groups or local nonprofits they will find mutual benefits exist. For example, if a Lodge offers use of space to support educational workshops and the nonprofit has to improve that space to make it suitable for their programming, in many cases the Lodge gets the added benefit of space improvements. Plus access to the kind of people who are curious, want to learn, or want to teach. They might even make good Masons... I think a situation like this may even revitalize programs like the DeMolay program in Olympia 1 too. Plus the boys get the added benefit of fun programming, and the skills they develop along the way.
I also really like the idea of our communities and Lodges rekindling the symbiotic relationship we once enjoyed.