Archive, Volume 2

Masonic Lodge Rooms and their Furnishings, 1870--1930
William D. Moore

Freemasonry, a ritual-based fraternal brotherhood with roots stretching back to sixteenth-century Britain, reached its greatest strength in the United States, in both popularity and influence, in the last third of the nineteenth and first third of the twentieth centuries. This period was contemporaneously called the "Golden Age of Fraternity." Freemasonry was at the core of this golden age, as it was both the archetypical fraternal organization and the most successful one. In 1879 there were an estimated 550,000 Freemasons in the United States. In 1896, membership was claimed to be 750,000, and by 1925 the number was reported at over three million. By the 1920s most towns in the United States boasted a lodge of Freemasons, and every lodge had a space in which they performed their rituals.

The 1930s brought the collapse of this blossoming of interest in Freemasonry, and, more generally, in fraternal societies. The movement suffered from what one commentator, at the time, called "The Tuberculosis of Fraternalism." Masonic membership declined. Lodges went bankrupt. Freemasonry has never regained the institutional strength that it had attained in this golden sixty-year era.

During this period thousands of massive ceremonial chairs and other furnishings were produced in workshops across America to be used in Masonic lodge rooms in the enactment of the private ritual which defined Freemasonry. In an attempt to analyze the significance of these meeting rooms and their furnishings, this essay will begin by examining the formal and stylistic qualities of Masonic ceremonial chairs and other forms of lodge room furnishings. The production, distribution, and architectural and functional contexts of these objects will then be addressed. Finally, these spaces and furnishings will be discussed in relation to social and cultural transformations occurring in America during the second half of the nineteenth century.

FRATERNAL CEREMONIAL FURNITURE

Officers' Chairs

Officers' chairs comprise the most dramatic group of furnishings found in the lodge room. These chairs are distinguished by their massive scale and often were designed with exaggerated height and width. The backs of these chairs stretch above the sitters' heads, denoting the importance of their occupants. In most instances, these extended backs provide space for carving and ornamentation, as is apparent in a chair produced in 1874 by the Boston furniture manufacturing firm of Braman & Shaw for the Masonic Block Association of Haverhill, Massachusetts. (figure 1) The upholstered back of this chair is flanked by fully articulated ionic columns and decorated with gilt enhanced incising. A broken pediment ornamented with foliated carving surmounted by a neo-grec palmetto crest serves as a hypertrophied crest rail. A mason's square and gavel are carved into the crest indicating that the chair is meant to be occupied by the Master of the lodge. Similarly, a chair offered by New York's Masonic Publishing and Supply Company featured a back which towered eight feet and nine inches above the floor. (figure 2)

The exaggerated width of these chairs also serves to indicate the significance of their occupants. In many examples, the officers' chairs are comprised of three adjoining seats as is illustrated in the Master's chair in the lodge room of the Lodge of the Ancient Landmarks No. 441 in Buffalo, New York, produced by T. Hersee and Company (figure 3), and in a piece advertised by the Retting Furniture Company of Grand Rapids Michigan in 1907. (figure 4) This form, the tri-seat as it was called contemporaneously, seems to be peculiar to fraternal ceremonial furniture. Although the tri-seat form comprises the best example of exaggerated width in these ceremonial chairs, this strategy could be employed to add significance to single seated chairs, as in the case of the Master's chair from Doric Hall in the Temple of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts in Boston. (figure 5) The excessive width of this piece is emphasized by its eight legs and ornamented stretcher as well as by the pierced woodwork flanking the upholstery on its back.

Revival styles were commonly used to embellish these massive ceremonial seats. Gothic motifs were among the most often employed of the historical sources available to designers. Two chairs offered by M.C. Lilley & Company of Columbus, Ohio, in the 1890s are spectacular examples of the type of ornamented gothic chair offered for sale to Masonic lodges. (figures 6 and 7) Every surface of these chairs is adorned with decorative articulation, be it zoomorphic carving, foliation, architectural detailing, or simple linear grooving.

Egyptian motifs were also frequently employed to embellish these chairs, as in an example from the Egyptian Hall of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts in Boston. (figure 8) The papyrus capitals on the columns flanking the upholstery, the pharaoh's heads, the lions, and the sphinxes on the flanking chairs all refer to the ancient civilization which thrived along the Nile. These are Americanized, modern interpretations of ancient Egyptian motifs, but they succeed in communicating the designer's intention of creating an associative relationship between the occupant of the chair and an ancient tradition.

The neo-grec style of the second-half of the nineteenth century was employed similarly in the design of Masonic ceremonial chairs. The Haverhill Master's chair, with it's palmettos, columns, and broken capital is one example of this. (figure 1) Other noteworthy neo-grec ceremonial chairs are located in the Masonic Temple in Augusta, Maine. (figure 9) The neo-grec style, which emphasized the innovative arrangement of historical design elements, was singularly well suited for use in chairs meant to ennoble their occupants. Masonic symbols of office, such as levels, plumb lines, or keys, were easily incorporated into the other ornamental devices comprising the overall composition.

Officer's chairs also were produced in a style which may be termed architectonic. These chairs are as much pieces of architecture as they are seating furniture. They have columns, roofs, cornices and their long solidly formulated arms suggest paneled walls. A chair in Corinthian Hall in the Temple of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts in Boston even has a keystone below it's elaborate cornice work. (figure 10)

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This excerpt is from Heredom, the transactions of the Scottish Rite Research Society

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