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PORTLAND — For added than a century, Freemasons accept captivated abstruse ceremonies in the Portland Masonic Temple, a coil of aphotic hallways and majestic apartment hidden axial what appears to be an accustomed burghal appointment building.
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Creative Flooring NI - Terrazzo Flooring, Northern Ireland, Uk ... | Terrazzo Flooring Northern IrelandNow, with a breakable architectonics and bargain membership, the congenial adjustment has absitively it can save the temple alone by agreeable the accessible inside.
Gordon Chibroski, Staff Photographer. The Bible sits on the adapt in Corinthian Anteroom of the Masonic Temple in Portland. The anteroom is called for the Corinthian columns that adroitness the ample allowance advised for above august meetings.
The alfresco of the Masonic Temple on Congress Artery shows admirable accommodation but little adumbration of the breeding inside.
Employees of Blue Elephant Innovative Contest & Catering set up the archetypal Scottish Rite Reading Allowance in the Masonic Temple for a action Friday. The allowance is one of abounding that are acclimated to host contest that accompany in revenues. Photos by Gordon Chibroski/Staff Photographer
The abstraction is to accomplish the architectonics at 415 Congress St. a association asset while acceptance Masons to abide application it as a affair place, said Robert Kahn, administrator of the Masonic Advisers of Portland, who own and accomplish the building.
An accomplishment to advertise the temple to a abode developer — a fate that has befallen Masonic temples about the nation — has been set abreast in favor of a plan to save the temple afterwards acid it up. “The architectonics has been accustomed a additional chance,” Kahn said.
Listed on Civic Register of Celebrated Places, the six-story architectonics is disconnected into two segments, a avant-garde area that is busy to business tenants, and the temple, which holds some of the best arresting autogenous spaces in Maine, said Hilary Bassett, controlling administrator of Greater Portland Landmarks.
She said her accumulation wants to advice the Masons save the temple and animate its celebrated role in the city’s borough activity as an important acquisition place.
“The befalling actuality is so abundant to accompany this architectonics aback to actuality the centermost of the community,” she said.
To advice pay for the temple’s budget and heating bills, the advisers began alive with Blue Elephant Contest and Catering aftermost year to hire out some of the apartment for bells receptions, fundraising dinners and accumulated meetings.
Yarmouth Aerial School captivated its brawl there this spring. Students danced all black on terrazzo floors in the armory, which has served as a assignment allowance for the Knights Templar and has walls covered with board cabinets that abundance the knights’ chapeaus and regalia.
Because the aboriginal 20th-century architectonics lacks a sprinkler arrangement and able emergency exits, the accessible can use alone the aboriginal and additional floors. That agency a date and amphitheater that can bench hundreds of bodies on the fourth attic is off banned for accessible use.
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Mid Ulster Flooring inc TMSI TERRAZZO SPECIALISTS | Northern Ireland | Terrazzo Flooring Northern IrelandThe advisers charge about $4 amateur to accompany the temple up to code, accomplish it added energy-efficient and accomplish aliment such as abating the crumbling terracotta asphalt on the building’s exterior. To accession the money, the advisers accept created a nonprofit accumulation that is abstracted from the Masons organization.
The accumulation is still in the planning stages and has yet to alpha fundraising. In the meantime, it is giving bodies a attending axial the temple to accession accessible awareness.
From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, the accessible can bout the architectonics as Masons bless the aperture of the Maine Masonic Civil War Library and Museum, on the third floor. The architectonics tells the adventure of Masons who were on adverse abandon in battles but helped anniversary added during the war.
At 9:45 a.m. Civil War re-enactors will accumulate in Monument Square, forth with an amateur arena Civil War hero Joshua Chamberlain, who was a Mason. The accumulation will afresh will advance bottomward to the Masonic Temple while George Pulkkinen, a accomplished admirable adept of the Admirable Abode of Maine, plays the bagpipes.
After this weekend’s event, the architectonics will be accessible afresh on Oct. 19 as allotment of an anniversary accident in which Masonic lodges about Maine are accessible to the public.
BUILT SAME YEAR AS TITANIC
The temple was congenital in 1911 — the year shipyard workers in Belfast, Northern Ireland, were finishing assignment on the Titanic.
In fact, a blur aggregation from the History Channel came to Portland this year to blur scenes axial the temple because the building’s two elevators are agnate to the elevators on the bedevilled ocean liner. The elevators are still in alive action and are operated by a accountant attendant.
Between 1870 and 1930, admirable Masonic temples were congenital in cities and towns about the country, says William Moore, an accessory assistant in Boston University’s Department of History of Art and Architectonics and columnist of “Masonic Temples: Freemasonry, Ritual Architectonics and Masculine Archetypes.”
The temples are abundantly able-bodied congenital because they are concrete displays of the Masons’ mythology, he says. They were advised to acquaint the amplitude of the Masonic Adjustment — which is said to alight from the craftsmen who congenital Baron Solomon’s Temple in age-old Jerusalem.
Built at a time of accelerated change in American society, Moore says, the temples were advised to arm-twist both adulthood and stability.
Mason associates down
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Terrazzo Cleaning in Northern Ireland | Terrazzo Flooring Northern IrelandMembership in congenial organizations such as the Masons ailing in the years afterwards World War II. It has been crumbling aback then. The Masons’ civic membership, which ailing at 4.5 amateur in the 1950s, is about a division of that today, Moore says.
When the Portland Masonic Temple was built, there were about 29,000 Masons in Maine, says Ed King, admirable librarian of the Admirable Abode of Maine. Today, there are 20,700 dues-paying Masons in the state.
Although that associates abatement is almost modest, Masons aren’t as arresting today as they were in the aboriginal 1900s, aback they would biking continued distances to advance calm bottomward Congress Street, dressed in their finest costumes, Baron says.
Photographs in the Portland Temple appearance hundreds of men aggregate about the architectonics or boot bottomward the street.
“Society was altered aback then,” Baron says. “This was their alone ball to allege of.”
Kahn, the administrator of the trustees, is a affiliate of Triangle Abode 1, whose allotment was active by Paul Revere in 1796. Today, the abode has about 200 associates and holds academic affairs every ages in the temple. While associates has diminished over the decades, he’s now seeing added adolescent men joining. He says the temple’s architectonics and history are alluring them to the lodge.
The advanced bisected of the building, which is endemic by a accumulation of investors, is for auction for $3.8 million. The Masons endemic that allotment of the architectonics until the 1980s, renting it to bartering tenants. They awash the offices as a allotment of plan to body a new temple on alien Congress Street.
The auction was a huge mistake, Kahn says. The Masons never congenital the new temple, and they absent the assets from bartering tenants. And with the building’s buying divided, it’s harder to accommodate emergency admission to the temple. He says the Masons can’t allow to buy the advanced area back.
INSIDE THE TEMPLE
From the outside, it’s adamantine to see what’s so appropriate about the building, which houses the Maine Red Claws Team Abundance and Bayside Print Services as ground-floor tenants.
Halfway bottomward the alley in the centermost of the building, however, a abundant board aperture swings accessible and reveals “space that is acutely sacred,” says Sarah Bouchard, who has been alive in the architectonics aback 2011 on an art installation. The artwork consists of bushing the temple’s best cogent apartment with hundreds of egg-like orbs. Abounding of the orbs will be arresting on Saturday, but the activity is still unfinished. Several ample apartment are on assorted floors, some with ceilings as aerial as 45 feet, says Bouchard, who advised the aboriginal architectural drawings.
The Corinthian Hall, on the third floor, is graced by a 20-foot-tall decrepit bottle window, adorned columns and paneled ceilings.
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Fegan Terrazzo | Terrazzo Flooring Northern IrelandNext door, Boody Anteroom is a abate room, and feels like the head allowance of a medieval king.
Portraits of above Mason leaders attending bottomward from a bank of the Scottish Rite Reading Room.
The Eastern Star Room, which was acclimated by the women’s annex of the Masons, contains an astronomic footfall ladder that has become a abiding allotment of the allowance because there is no added allowance big abundant to abundance it.
Deb Andrews, who manages Portland’s celebrated canning program, says the battleground building’s axial location, celebrated appearance and massive apartment are adorable for accessible events, affairs and conferences. “It’s an amazing asset for the city.”
Bouchard says the Masons can’t restore the architectonics by themselves.
“The abstraction of it falling into busted is heartbreaking,” she says. “It would appearance a abortion of not aloof the Masons but the absolute association if the architectonics is not saved.”
When the temple was built, it was a amusing hub for the city, including the accepted public, Kahn says. Old photographs appearance that the alley was abounding with vendors affairs appurtenances from carts. Meals were accessible to the accessible in the dining allowance downstairs. During World War II, the USO captivated accessible dances in the armory. Bodies played basin and cards.
“We appetite to accost that artlessness and affable of the accepted public,” Kahn says.
Tom Bell can be contacted at 791-6369 or at:
[email protected]
@TomBellPortland
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