Masonic

[ateolf]

We did another tour through the Memphis Heritage Society of another Masonic Temple. This is the one that was downtown on Court St., according to the tour it was active until 2020 and then they ditched the building and this developer guy (he was the guy giving the tour) bought it. He still hasn't found a use for it. Sometimes uses it for events now but it's a weird old building that's not up to ADA code, currently has no a/c, etc. Anyway, the tour was fun. This one's even bigger than the Scottish Rite temple we toured however many months ago. It still has a lot of the similar features, like the stage with the layers of scenery-laden curtains (this stage was a little smaller though the room itself was maybe bigger (area-wise, the ceiling was lower and it didn't have the stadium seating). There were a few pipe organs throughout. Also a few smaller kind of theater-like rooms throughout the floors (six floors altogether). There was one small room painted like a dungeon with a skull painted on the wall. Wacky Masons! Apparently it'd held a child's coffin in it previously. I think he said that it was used by multiple different lodges as kind of a shared thing (the whole building itself, not just the baby coffin dungeon room). The main floor is mostly this ballroom and there's a mezzanine that he said he had to knock out a wall to find (at some point they converted it to offices off the second floor and walled it up where it overlooked the ballroom). Also, where the wall was, you could see the marble of the pillars that they'd painted over. People do weird stuff with paint. Anyway, a fun tour and a nice compare and contrast with the other lodge we'd toured somewhat recently. Since that one was active and this one was not, you get a little different perspective. Some things are missing but some things you get a closer look at as well. Oh yeah, and we also went up into this attic when we were on the top floor and that was kinda cool for a minute or so. There's probably some other stuff I'm forgetting, but whatever.