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Masonic Temple

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1908, Wood, Donn and Deming. 801 13th St. NW
  • Masonic Temple (Dan Cunningham)

The six-story Masonic Temple is located on a trapezoidal site formed by New York Avenue, H Street, and 13th Street where it is visible from several vantage points. The Masonic Temple provided facilities for large auditoriums, lodge rooms, a library, a banquet hall, and a mystic shrine. The steel-framed trapezoidal building is clad in Indiana limestone and a light gray brick. Large semicircular openings articulate its massive rusticated base. The super-structure is lined with a colonnade flanked with heavily rusticated piers. Above the attic, a balustrade gives scale to the whole.

After the Masonic Order abandoned the building and the Downtown East area became unfashionable, the building became a movie theater. As Downtown East once again became popular, the Temple's Beaux-Arts vocabulary inspired several new buildings nearby. Today, the building houses the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Pamela Scott and Antoinette J. Lee
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Data

What's Nearby

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Citation

Pamela Scott and Antoinette J. Lee, "Masonic Temple", [Washington, District of Columbia], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/DC-01-DE18.

Print Source

Buildings of the District of Columbia, Pamela Scott and Antoinette J. Lee. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993, 195-195.

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