Scottish Rite Cathedral

The most monumental building in New Castle, rivaling even the Courthouse ( LA1) for its hillside site, is Free Masons Lodge No. 433. It is one of Schmid's finest designs. Richard Gustave Schmid (1863–1937), who trained at MIT and worked at one time in the Brookline office of H. H. Richardson, created a neoclassical design of limestone and cream-colored brick. Lined with two-story round-arched windows separated by Ionic columns, the facade has a shallow pediment at its center. The windows open onto an elaborate entrance foyer sheathed in travertine and with onyx pillars; bronze doors and balustrades add to the opulence. Three art-glass chandeliers forty feet overhead depict symbolic characters. The structure includes a banquet room seating 3,000, an auditorium seating 3,240, and the various meeting rooms necessary to a Masonic lodge. The rear elevation is scaled eight stories down the hillside and features an enormous expanse of brick diaper work.