Hidden Historical past of San Francisco’s Secretive Masons and Odd Fellows Revealed

A lot is fabricated from the secrets and techniques of the Freemasons, a fraternal order whose symbols seem on every part from the greenback invoice to the famed live performance venue Masonic Auditorium in San Francisco’s Nob Hill. 

However the Masonic shouldn’t be solely a spot to see concert events—it’s additionally the state headquarters of Freemasonry and boasts an almost 50-foot “endomosaic” mural that features soil from the entire 300+ California lodges pressed between its acrylic panes, a window crammed with cryptic symbolism. 

However in line with teachers accustomed to “secret societies” and members of the fraternal orders themselves, all of the rituals and hierarchies and handshakes have a a lot easier rationalization. Teams just like the Freemasons had been fulfilling a really fundamental want: neighborhood. 

“The secrecy is absolutely overdone,” stated Margaret Jacob, a distinguished professor of historic analysis on the College of California Los Angeles. “The one secrets and techniques had been the passwords and the gestures, so members might acknowledge one another.” 

Anybody might learn the minutes of the Freemasons’ conferences, and the key handshakes and passwords had been primarily to maintain impostors out, since fraternal orders usually offered materials help to their members in occasions of want.  

Freemasonry originated in England within the 1710s and took maintain within the U.S. within the 1730s—Benjamin Franklin was one of many earliest American members—and has impressed many instantly and not directly associated teams such because the Knights Templar, the Odd Fellows and the Knights of Columbus. 

“All of them imitate Freemasonry,” Jacob stated. “As a result of that was the one mannequin.” 

The necessity for neighborhood—and safety—was notably acute in Gold Rush period San Francisco, when many individuals arrived within the metropolis alone, with out the help of household or associates. They joined orders just like the Freemasons and the Odd Fellows to fill in that hole.

“Actually, you are paying your dues in order that once you die, your burial charges are taken care of,” stated Woody LaBounty, president of San Francisco Heritage. “And in case you’re injured, you had funds to help your loved ones whilst you’re recovering, so it was very early form of social security web.”

San Francisco’s Columbarium, the one public place left for mortal stays within the metropolis, is crammed with urns that bear the symbols of fraternal orders: the sq. and compass for Freemasons, tree stumps for the Fashionable Woodmen of America, interlocked chains for the Odd Fellows. 

“The nineteenth century was the golden age of fraternal orders,” LaBounty stated. “Go to a Gold Rush city; you’ll usually see the largest constructing is a late 1800s fraternal constructing, a corridor put collectively for networking and enterprise.” 

San Francisco continues to be a spot the place folks come with out attachments to strike it wealthy, and the necessity to forge new social ties is simply as necessary because it was within the nineteenth century. Whereas general membership at old-school fraternal orders is in decline‚ engagement with members-only areas and friendship golf equipment is on the rise. 

“Society is completely different now,” Jacob stated of the Freemasons, including that many conventional fraternal orders are segregated and exclusionary—even as we speak.

Freemasonry remains to be solely open to males—although there’s a women-based order tied to the Masons referred to as the Rebekahs. The Impartial Order of the Odd Fellows, for its half, started accepting girls in 2000. 

However vestiges of those once-powerful and widespread organizations stay scattered all through the town—reminders of a fading period. There are nonetheless 10 lively Masonic lodges in San Francisco, unfold throughout six completely different buildings. Many extra buildings now not serve the fraternal orders that constructed them. At this time, most of those historic buildings help different types of communal bonding, from faith to train.

The Commonplace took a peek inside three of those storied gathering areas—an lively Odd Fellows Lodge, an lively Masonic Lodge and a repurposed Masonic Lodge—to evaluate the legacy of fraternal orders and their outsized ambitions. 

You may stroll proper by the Mission Masonic Heart on Mission Road and never even discover it—the one symbols of the fraternal order are excessive up on a concrete facade. The again entrance on Bartlett Road, which as we speak serves as the principle entrance, is much more unwelcoming, with a chain-link fence topped by barbed wire edging an empty parking zone. 

The setting couldn’t differ extra from what’s hidden within the inside: a wonderful inside with a community-minded shepherd whose connection to the lodge traces via generations. 

“You may say this place is in my DNA,” Jim Lintner, a member of the Mission Lodge who helps steward the constructing, stated. Each his father and his grandfather had been members of the lodge, and his dad and mom met at a dance there in 1947.

Regardless of its ho-hum exterior, the constructing inside is superb and filled with lore. It was constructed in 1897 after the lodge’s unique dwelling at sixteenth and Valencia streets burned to the bottom. The fireplace after the 1906 earthquake stopped two blocks away, and the constructing quickly turned a mortuary—our bodies had been saved within the basement, and survivors recognized family members within the lodge room. 

Its 4-foot-thick brick partitions have seen rather a lot of their time, beforehand serving as a neighborhood submit workplace and a library. In a rating of Masonic buildings in California, it got here within the high 5, in line with Lintner. 

“It’s the jewel of the Mission,” Lintner stated. 

The Mission Lodge meets each Tuesday, after they collect for dinner and sit on the unique cane chairs from 1897—nonetheless in good situation, with “ML” carved into the wood backs for “Mission Lodge.” 

The lodge room itself is equally pristine, a grand corridor with copper-lined doorways, intricate molding and stained glass. Upholstered thrones of darkish wooden stand on either side of the room, tall columns with spheres that signify the earth and the universe. 

The thrones are much like these for the grand and the vice grand within the Odd Fellows Yerba Buena Lodge, and there are Odd Fellows teams that now meet on the Mission Masonic Heart as an alternative of Market and Seventh. 

“They’re older, and so they’re anxious about their security in that location,” Lintner stated. 

A lot of the Masonic imagery is impressed by King Solomon’s Temple, in line with Lintner, with the sq. and compass representing not solely stonemason’s instruments however, extra importantly, metaphorical guides for find out how to reside your life. 

“It’s about preserving your actions sq., main on a superb path,” Lintner stated. The all-seeing eye is a reminder that God—no matter God you imagine in, since Freemasonry shouldn’t be a faith—is watching you. 

Whereas there have been 580 members of the Mission Lodge at its peak, as we speak it numbers lower than half with 220 members, and solely round 60 are lively. However Lintner shouldn’t be anxious in regards to the decline. 

“Masonry’s not going anyplace,” he stated. “It’s been round for a very long time, and it’s going to be round for lots longer.” 

Not like lots of the fraternal buildings round city, the Odd Fellows promote the construction’s function with a winged blue signal that screams ODD FELLOWS over Market Road, with the group’s image of friendship, three interlocked chain hyperlinks, on the high. 

But the constructing isn’t sometimes open to the general public—which is a disgrace. 

The black-and-white murals in one of many group’s halls are gorgeous unto themselves. The oversize work are {powerful} symbols of life’s most foundational components: a coffin with a skeleton crawling out of it for mortality, a beehive for neighborhood, a serpent for knowledge, an all-seeing eye representing the next being.

However that’s not all. There’s additionally the Odd Fellows bar room and museum, a comfy lounge crammed with ephemera that features treasures from San Francisco’s historical past: black-and-white photographs of chic gatherings on the Fairmont Lodge; a 1924 occasion program that has an actual, diamond-studded California gold nugget; vintage blindfolds that signify mankind’s darkness. 

Three completely different chapters, or orders, of the Odd Fellows used to satisfy within the constructing at Market and Seventh Streets in San Francisco. At this time, there’s just one that also meets in individual on the location, because of the ongoing security considerations Downtown. 

The six-floor Odd Fellows constructing was accomplished in 1909 after the primary construction was destroyed to create a fireplace break after the 1906 earthquake and ensuing conflagration. For a lot of its time, it was totally devoted to the fraternal group, nevertheless it now shares the constructing with the Alonzo Traces Dance Firm and a podcast maker. 

The CVS that was once on the bottom flooring shuttered within the wake of the George Floyd protests and by no means reopened, in line with David McLaughlin, who helps to handle the constructing and can be a member of the Yerba Buena Order of the Odd Fellows. 

The scenario Downtown has deteriorated a lot, in line with McLaughlin, that the fraternal membership is trying into promoting the constructing and shifting its group elsewhere—right into a neighborhood just like the Richmond. 

Simply as within the Mission, you may cross by the massive yellow-colored constructing at Ninth Avenue and Judah Road within the Sundown with out trying as much as see the stately neoclassical columns that gird the entrance. As soon as the Parnassus Masonic Corridor, as we speak, it’s dwelling to a Taoist non secular group. 

“It was constructed throughout the colonial revival,” LaBounty stated. “It’s an outsize constructing for the neighborhood, and it actually reveals the ability of the Masons as attempting to be the boosters of business strips.” 

The Freemasons sometimes owned their buildings, utilizing lease from ground-level business companies as a solution to generate income to help their assembly halls on the higher flooring.  

Constructed in 1914, the previous Masonic corridor represents a bygone period when the Masons wielded appreciable affect within the metropolis and had sufficient members to publish each day notices within the newspaper.

The I Kuan-Tao Basis of America, a non-religious non secular group, hosts conferences, runs a summer time camp and homes a small library—doing the identical form of community-building work the Masons would have tried, with no password wanted. 

“The Tao helps to awaken folks to have extra knowledge in life,” stated James Chih in explaining the philosophy—whose lineage traces again centuries and contains such luminaries as Lao-Tzu and Confucius—that guides the middle. “What can we do to create much less struggling?” 

“The household buildings usually are not as sturdy as they was once,” stated Grasp Lee, who helms the group. “There are lots of psychological well being crises.” 

The Taoist manner makes an attempt to spotlight gratitude, assist others and apply empathy. The group additionally needs to make sure folks know what the constructing is—Muni bus line 43, which providers the nook lengthy used the title “Masonic Temple” for the cease, despite the fact that the constructing hasn’t been related to the Freemasons for many years. 

But proof of the greater than 70-year legacy of the Masons stays—particularly within the pentagram-shaped ceiling inset within the group’s assembly corridor, a reference to the Jap Order, one which accepted each women and men. Simply throughout city, there’s one other such star within the ceiling—in what’s as we speak a Dwell Match gymnasium.