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Maryland Historical Society
Library of Maryland History
201 W. Monument Street
Baltimore, MD 21201
Phone: 410-685-3750
Fax: 410-385-2105
E-mail: library @mdhs.org
Baltimore Architecture:
Then and Now
Masonic Building, 223-225 North Charles Street
image infoArchitects:At the close of the Civil War, the Grand Lodge of Maryland, the governing body of Ancient Free and Accepted Masonry in Maryland, commissioned architect Edmund G. Lind to design a new Masonic Temple a block north and a block west of a building in the 100 block of St. Paul Street which they had occupied since the 1820s. Lind drew up plans for a three-story marblefront building just south of St. Paul's [P.E] Church, its first floor partially taken up by shops and its two upper floors devoted entirely to Masonic purposes. These multiplied as the number of Masons in Baltimore grew, and when the building was gutted by fire on Christmas Day, 1890, the Grand Lodge seized the opportunity to expand its facility, instructing the architectural firm of Carson and Sperry to add an additional floor in the course of the rebuilding process.
1869 Edmund G. Lind
1893 Carson and Sperry
1909 Joseph E. SperryThe firm retained Lind's 1867 facade, but added an additional floor above it. The result must have met with the Masons's approval: when fire again ravaged the building in January, 1908, the Grand Lodge once more called upon Joseph E. Sperry - by then a solo practitioner - to restore their home to the splendor to which they had grown accustomed and to enlarge it still further. Sperry this time added two more upper floors, disguised by a Mansard roof to look like only a single additional story from the Charles Street side of the building. Among the ten meeting rooms available for Masonic use were a Tudor Gothic one modeled on the Roslyn Chapel in Edinburgh, Scotland, and another room which recreated the interior of an Egyptian temple. The building also featured ornate lobbies, a marble staircase, stained-glass windows, and rococo chandeliers, pipe-organs, and two large kitchens.
The Grand Lodge maintained its headquarters here until 1994, when the shift of Masonic membership to the suburbs finally decided it to move to property it owned in Baltimore County's Hunt Valley. The Charles Street temple was put on the market, and acquired eventually by Baltimore attorney and developer Peter Angelos.
Image information
left: MdHS Photograph, PP107.44
right: Photo by John Orrick, 2000.Baltimore Architecture - Homepage
Site Contents
1 Masonic Building
2 Enoch Pratt House
3 Graham-Hughes House
4 American Brewery
5 Belvedere Hotel
6 Camden Station
7 Alex Brown Building
8 Williams-Small House
9 Timanus Mill
10 The Pembroke Apartments
11 Merchant's Exchange
12 Old B and O Building
13 Hughes and Denny Building
14 Guardian Trust Building
15 Old Post Office Building
16 St. Joseph's R.C. Church & Washington Firehouse
17 The Maryland Casualty Building
18 Church of the Redeemer Building
19 The Popplein Family Mansion/Marlborough Apartments
20 Samuel Hoffman, later the Dr. William Osler Mansion
21 Cohen Brothers, later the Dr. Robinson Building
22 Saint Peter's Catholic Church 1770
23 The Baltimore Humane Impartial Society Building
24 Baltimore and Susquehanna Railroad Calvert Station
25 The Richmond Market Building Site
26 Dr. Charles Howard's Site and Mount Vernon Place M.E. Church
27 The Stephen Broadbent Mansion "The Glen Mary"
