"They just don’t make places like this anymore.”
March 16, 2019 6:05 AM   Subscribe

Masonic Temple reborn at 100: inside the mysterious, historic landmark. A photo essay from cleveland.com on the history and restoration of Cleveland's Masonic Temple and Performing Arts Center, as it approaches its 100th anniversary.
posted by soundguy99 (10 comments total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
 
Beautiful. I really need to amble up the turnpike and visit Cleveland soon.
posted by octothorpe at 6:21 AM on March 16, 2019


Spokane also has a Masonic Temple that has been used as a public space. It's a beautiful colonnaded building just outside of downtown full of those woodwork-rich rooms which are typical in Masonic spaces and gorgeous stone work. Teddy Roosevelt came to town in 1903 to turn the first shovel for the groundbreaking, which is why the grand historical hotel downtown The Davenport has an actual Presidential Suite.

(Seriously, Spokane has a lot of interesting things going on. It's just not really on the radar much.)
posted by hippybear at 6:52 AM on March 16, 2019 [3 favorites]


Cleveland and Akron have so many beautiful performance spaces, with Playhouse Square, the Masonic Temple, the Maltz Performing Arts Center, Gartner Auditorium at the Art Museum, all the restored former movie palaces, ethnic halls, Tri-C campus auditoriums, Watjean Auditorium at Cleveland State - and so many more.

Of course, the greatest of all, and in the opinion of many (like New Yorker music critic Alex Ross) the best in the country, is Severance Hall - home of the Cleveland Orchestra.

The problem is, with the exception of the Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall, there are few performers or events that are grand or magnificent on the scale of these performance spaces. What contemporary entertainment phenomenon exists on the scale of the Masonic Hall?

When my favorite crap bands come to town, they come to the Grog Shop or Beachland. Which is where they belong.

Like Detroit and Buffalo, Cleveland has an embarrassment of beautiful entertainment infrastructure to go along with its bounty of affordable housing, fresh water, convenient retail, fine dining, accessible countryside, professional sports teams, private schools, studio space and abundant outdoor and indoor recreational opportunities.

The problem is, everyone would prefer to pay much more, for less living space, less convenience, a higher level of overall life annoyance, higher prices, etc., in the big cities to the east, far west and far south of us.

So all of these wonderful assets like Masonic Hall go underused. Oh well.
posted by Modest House at 7:35 AM on March 16, 2019 [3 favorites]


My wife and I were married at a repurposed masonic temple.Our friend/florist keep making a "bweaaaahhhh" mouth noise and saying it was like being in "eyes wide shut". Good times. (It was awesome actually.)
posted by hilberseimer at 8:19 AM on March 16, 2019 [1 favorite]


The Marciano Art Foundation is in a former Scottish Rite Temple.
posted by mogget at 9:06 AM on March 16, 2019


Saw the Breeders there recently and it was so, so good.
posted by bitter-girl.com at 11:31 AM on March 16, 2019


Well, MY first thought, of course, was "oh, is this the Masonic Hall that Jack White saved from foreclosure?" No, that one is in Detroit.
posted by yhbc at 2:41 PM on March 16, 2019 [1 favorite]


You can get one super cheap in the northern Minnesota town of Virginia. $53k for 12000 sqft, but judging by the photos it'll need a little love.

421 1st St Virginia MN

"Originally the Masonic Hall of Virginia which is located in a heavily used business area of downtown. An impressive 3 story facility over 6000 sq/ft on the main level with an equally sized area on the second level, a light filled Great Hall, most of the original woodwork throughout, numerous side rooms available for office rental spaces including a coffee shop ready to be used, and most impressively, a beautiful brick exterior!"

I dunno, I think the cool sweeping stairs are more impressive than, um, brick.
posted by Cris E at 9:25 PM on March 16, 2019


Oh wow, I attended an event there sometime in the 90s when a friend was elevated to some grand poobah Masonic status I didn’t understand. The interior environment seemed so implausible that I felt like I’d stepped through a looking glass or wardrobe into a magical world.

Not shown in the article’s photos is a room full of the largest, heaviest billiard tables I’d ever seen, the action (or lack thereof) perennially witnessed by numerous mounted elk and moose heads looming from the walls.
posted by jon1270 at 7:18 AM on March 17, 2019


What a cool concert venue! I oncewent to a wedding at an old Masonic temple in Winona that made use of the amazing painted in 1909 backdrops on stage. The wedding party walked in from the wings of the stage for the ceremony and used a custom DJ soundtrack for all the music. A+++, would attend a wedding theater play again!

Sometimes my community orchestra rehearses in the basement of a Masonic lodge in Minneapolis built in 1954. It lacks architectural charm and feels just like a Lutheran church basement but with bonus creepy portraits of way more white men than Jesus on all the walls. Once we got to practice upstairs in the ritual hall, a windowless room with an A-line roof, painted and carpeted in dark blues and greens, with increasingly elaborate throne chairs at the front of the room. All in all, it is a fascinating, creepy place with gracious hosts, even after I had to call 911 and force reluctant musicians to leave the building due to a gas leak. They also have a meeting gavel carved like a Scandinavian troll, which I covet, should I ever have future need for a gavel.
posted by Maarika at 12:18 PM on March 17, 2019


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