Michael

 

Know the atmosphere you’re talking about – once spent a couple of hours late one winter’s Saturday afternoon in a much larger building of the same era – by myself.  Think I might even have written about that at some stage – but darned if I know where I put that writing.  Said building has now been adapted and renovated to an inch of its former decrepitude and is now high-priced apartments … so it will be many years before anybody else can have an experience like that in the building!

 

Love your writing – sometimes I think I hang around on BP just to read one of your posts like this!!

And then I remember that I also enjoy the technical questions, and the philosophy of ][<en …

… and of course I put up with the noise along the way because life’s like that!

 

Was great to see you in San Juan … catch you again soon!

 

Cheers

 

 

The call came late thurs pm
..and I said I would try to swing by late Fri to have a look at.It ;
A 1924 massive brick and terra cotta Masonic hall
complete with terra cotta entablature supported by two story pilasters that with the exception of a few antebellum homes the Yankees didn't burn
was the finest piece of architecture this little town had.
I was on my way up to a remote cabin to go hunting with the guys, and the little town was on the way.
Dressed in cameo and orange and packing an old mauser (Karl Gustav) on the back seat I rumbled into town at the end of a friday
They were predicting a winter storm for the weekend
and so by Fri afternoon  the sky was dark and ominous with a cold wind out of the North. Good for the fire of the cabin and little else
I met the architect there and he let me in.
A taciturn man with a gaunt face and expectant eyes he showed me around the cavernous interior like a night watchman taking mental notes of my Masonic observations regarding the "architecture of the Lodge " and scribbling details on the failing masonry.
The Lodge was long abandoned and devoid of furniture;
yet all the original room details including the chandeliers were still there and intact.
There had never been any cosmetic makeover or adaptive
reuse that I could see.
The rooms of mystery were still there;
going from the library with its fireplace and occulas
to the small degree rooms of the initiate (1-2-3 degees)
and finally to the floor of the  Lodge itself (the upper room)
where I was shown the trap door (complete w/ dumb waiter)
from which they raise the dead (see cult of Ossirus)
. then to the   center stage where the grandmaster sits;
including the chairs of the east and the west  all
still complete and rich in oak paneling
The Masonic presence  in America has survived from Williamsburg to the Boston tea Party through the Civil and both world wars  right up to the present era;
In fact most of our presidents up until Nixon were masons
but for rural agrarian  America ;the 1920s produced some of their finest lodges 
and this was one of them  ;
He then showed me into the attic
in which I could see the evidence of rust jacking going on over
the i beam holding up the exterior terra-cotta entablature and its coping
; out of another window showed me where the repointing
was getting blown out (hard Portland)
we discussed various issues of the restoration
when there came a muffled knock at the lodge door;
it was one of those "what was that" knocks
Now don't get me wrong ; but old abandoned public buildings;
like grave yards  take on a life of their own  after dark;
in this half light  of a late fri with the on coming storm 
the hidden passageways start becoming  active again;
waiting rooms fill up with shadows ;and
the building creaks and groans in the wind   and then
of course there is the  muffled  knock
so  lets just say its time to go...feet do yor stuff
Outside We said our good-byes at the door
and I told him i would send in my observations.... well most of them anyway
..you get the rest ...Py 
   


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