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Bannack, Montana Photo Gallery

 

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Masonic Lodge and School in Bannack, Montana

 

Masonic Lodge, Bannack, Montana, 1963

Photo by John DeHass, Historic American Buildings Survey, 1963.

This image available for photographic prints and downloads HERE!

 

Masonic Lodge, Bannack, Montana

Masonic Lodge today, July, 2008, Kathy Weiser.

This image available for photographic prints and downloads HERE!

 

 

 

 

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Situated diagonally across from the old courthouse and adjacent to Grasshopper Creek, this building served the citizens of Bannack with a school on the first floor and the Masonic Order meeting room on the second floor. It was built in 1874 by the Masonic Order, an  international fraternity, whose origins go back to the builders of of Gothic style architecture during the Middle Ages in Europe. The Masons, or Freemasons, as they are more properly called, were organized into lodges; used signs, symbols and passwords, and were separated into different grades or degrees of skills with the Master Mason being the highest.

This building was constructed in a modified or western version of the Greek Revival style, with wood pilasters adorning the two front corners of the building. The Masonic emblem, "The Square and Compass," was carved from hard wood and mounted above the windows on the second floor.  The structure cost about $1,500 to build. As the popularity of Gothic architecture declined, lodges began to take members, called "Accepted Masons," who were not actually builders, but who would be a credit to the organization. Though the Masons stresses morality and has religious overtones, is not a religion.

Classes were held in the building for nearly 70 years, before it finally closed in 1951, due to a lack of students. For the next decade, the building deteriorated badly, and by 1864, the outside stairwell, to the second story, was gone. Today, the building has been preserved by the Bannack State Park. 

On June 23, 2000, the Grand Lodge of Masons officially chartered Bannack Lodge (3-7-77) as the first Historic Lodge in the state to help preserve the building and the heritage of Masonry.

 

 

© Kathy Weiser/Legends of America, updated September, 2008

 

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From the Rocky Mountain General Store

 

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