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House of the Temple

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Address
  
1733 16th St NW

Completed
  
October 18, 1915

Opened
  
18 October 1915

Architectural style
  
Neoclassical architecture

Country
  
United States

Construction started
  
1911

Town or city
  
Washington, D.C.

Architect
  
John Russell Pope

House of the Temple httpsuploadwikimediaorgwikipediacommonsthu

Client
  
Scottish Rite of Freemasonry

Similar
  
Lodge Mother Kilwinning, George Washington Masonic, Freemasons' Hall - London, African American Civil War, Scottish Rite Temple

The House of the Temple is a Masonic temple in Washington, D.C., United States that serves as the headquarters of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, Southern Jurisdiction, U.S.A. (officially, "Home of The Supreme Council, 33°, Ancient & Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, Southern Jurisdiction, Washington D.C., U.S.A.")

Contents

Map of House of the Temple, Washington, DC 20009, USA

Designed by John Russell Pope, it stands at 1733 16th Street, N.W., in the Dupont Circle neighborhood, about one mile directly north of the White House. The full name of the Supreme Council is "The Supreme Council (Mother Council of the World) of the Inspectors General Knights Commander of the House of the Temple of Solomon of the Thirty-third degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry of the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States of America."

It contains a museum devoted to Albert Pike, who rewrote a number of the Scottish Rite rituals and headed its Supreme Council from 1859 until his death in 1891, and whose remains are buried in the House of the Temple.

History

On May 31, 1911, 110 years after the founding of the Supreme Council, Grand Commander James D. Richardson broke ground on the spot where the House of the Temple now stands in Washington, D.C. Grand Master J. Claude Keiper, of the Grand Lodge of the District of Columbia, laid the cornerstone in the northeast corner on October 18, 1911.

The temple was designed by noted architect John Russell Pope, who modeled it after the tomb of Mausolus at Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The building was dedicated four years later on October 18, 1915.

The building's design was widely praised by contemporary architects, and it won Pope the Gold Medal of the Architectural League of New York in 1917. In his 1920 book L'Architecture aux Etatis-Unis, French architect Jacques Gréber described it as "a monument of remarkable sumptuousness ... the ensemble is an admirable study of antique architecture stamped with a powerful dignity." Fiske Kimball's 1928 book American Architecture describes it as "an example of the triumph of classical form in America". In the 1920s, a panel of architects named it "one of the three best public buildings" in the United States, along with the Nebraska State Capitol and the Pan American Union Building in Washington, D.C. In 1932, it was ranked as one of the ten top buildings in the country in a poll of federal government architects.

Confederate general and former Sovereign Grand Commander Albert Pike was the author of an 1871 book called Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, a book that describes in detail the 33 degrees of Scottish Rite Freemasonry, the stories and teachings associated with each rank, the rituals connected to each rank, and other lodge proceedings. In 1944, the remains of Albert Pike were removed from Oak Hill Cemetery in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C. and placed in the House of the Temple. The remains of Past Grand Commander John Henry Cowles were entombed in the temple in 1952, after his 31-year reign as Grand Commander. The Temple also holds one of the largest collections of materials related to Scottish poet and Freemason Robert Burns in its library, the first public library in Washington, D.C.

The House of the Temple is designated as a contributing property to the Sixteenth Street Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

From 1990 to 2011, the temple hosted a community garden on its grounds. The Temple Garden occupied about 0.25-acre (1,000 m2), divided into about 70 small plots worked by nearby residents. In fall 2011, the Temple closed the garden in order to use the space to stage construction equipment for a rehabilitation project.

In the 1951 science fiction film The Day the Earth Stood Still, the House of the Temple is in the background as a Washington, D.C., motorcycle cop vainly tries to start his engine.

In the 2009 novel The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown, the building is the setting for several key scenes.

References

House of the Temple Wikipedia