The current Indianapolis Masonic Temple, also known as Indiana Freemasons Hall, is a historic Masonic Temple located at Indianapolis, Indiana. Construction was begun in 1908, and the building was dedicated in May 1909. It is an eight-story, Classical Revival style cubic form building faced in Indiana limestone. The building features rows of engaged Ionic order columns. It was jointly financed by the Indianapolis Masonic Temple Association and the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of Indiana, and was designed by the distinguished Indianapolis architectural firm of Rubush and Hunter.
The Indianapolis Masonic Temple is the statewide headquarters of the Grand Lodge F&AM of Indiana, and home to numerous individual Masonic lodges and associated groups. It is also the location of the Masonic Library and Museum of Indiana; the Indiana Masonic Home Foundation; Indiana DeMolay, and many more. The building features an auditorium, two stages, a large dining hall and catering kitchen, a ballroom, and seven large lodge rooms designed for a variety of ceremonial and social purposes.
History
The Freemasons of Indianapolis had previously built two other jointly owned temples in Indianapolis in partnership with the Grand Lodge. Those stood on the southeast corner of Washington Street and Capitol Avenue (formerly Tennessee Street) and diagonally across from the Indiana Statehouse. The Hyatt Regency Indianapolis Hotel currently stands at that site. The current Temple is the third such building in Indianapolis.
Indianapolis Masonic Hall of 1850
The first joint Masonic temple in the city, a colonnaded Greek Revival hall, was built in 1850. The building was the site of the Indiana Constitutional Convention of 1850 that met to draft a new state constitution. The state government rented the Masonic temple for the gathering because the House of Representative in the Indiana Statehouse was too small to accommodate the 150 convention delegates.
A reporter for the Locomotive Magazine sardonically described the convention scene on February l, 1851:
Along with its intended role as a meeting and ceremonial space for the city's Freemasons, the hall's main auditorium became the first large-scale venue in the city for speakers, entertainers, debates and presentations. Despite Freemasonry's strict rules forbidding the discussion of politics in their meetings, such restrictions did not extend to the use of their auditorium. In 1853, the Masonic Hall hosted fiery demonstrations and presentations by the city's black leaders and white anti-slavery speakers in opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act. The events were touched off by charges leveled against John Freeman, an Indianapolis house painter wrongfully accused of being a runaway slave.
On September 19, 1859, Abraham Lincoln gave a speech at the Temple (the second of three he ultimately made in Indianapolis during his career). He opened his political remarks by recalling his famous words: “This government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free; that a house divided against itself cannot stand.”
Indianapolis Masonic Hall of 1875
The first temple suffered from serious construction defects and was demolished in 1873. It was replaced by an imposing red-brick Romanesque structure on the same corner, officially opened in 1875. The second temple was designed with ample rental space on the first two floors to generate income. Renters would eventually include a cleaners and a Turkish bath, along with several offices. There were ceremonial and social rooms for five Masonic lodges on the upper floors. However, late in the design process it was noted with great alarm by the state's Masons that the architects had neglected to create an appropriately large meeting hall for the annual meetings of hundreds of lodge officers each year. The Grand Lodge was forced to hurriedly purchase an adjoining lot immediately to the south to attach an architecturally incongruous assembly hall to the backside of the building. After an initial estimate of under $70,000, the total cost of the project was $120,000. The embarrassing errors and cost overruns, combined with the great economic Panic of 1873 nearly bankrupted the Grand Lodge.
Indianapolis Masonic Temple of 1909
The Masons and the economy eventually rebounded, and by 1900 there were eight Indianapolis Masonic lodges and numerous appendant groups that had filled the second building beyond its designed capacity. Following a devastating fire in the second temple in 1905, it was determined that a new building at a different location needed to be constructed.