What stands: the lodge city a century on

The present record, November 2026

The survivors: Of the two dozen chartered bodies in Howard's roster, the present record reached for this section carries two still working under their own charters. Mishawaka Lodge No. 130 meets in its temple on Went Avenue, its officers installed in public into the present century, its oldest living Past Master — raised in 1942 — kept in its record in 2015: the order of 1852, continuous. And Mishawaka Council 1878 of the Knights of Columbus works from its state-directory address and its own website, serving the town's three parishes, its scholarships and sponsorships in the record of the present decade as the Private Clubs section carries them: the council of the post-war expansion, continuous. Behind them, Monitor Lodge No. 286 of the Odd Fellows is documented meeting in its North Main temple in 2001, a hundred and thirty-four years from its institution, with its state after that year unestablished in this record. The Pythian line is documented to 1947 and no further; the Grand Army's post closed in 1936 with its generation; the tents, hives, camps and courts of the insurance shelf stand in no present record reached; and the unchartered societies — DeAmicis, DiLoreto, the BK Club — work on without charters to surrender, which may be the roster's last lesson: the bodies that answered to supreme councils mostly died with their industries, and the bodies that answered only to their own members are, several of them, still in their halls. The buildings' afterlives are mapped in the Private Clubs section. What the orders were is stated at the head of this section, and the whole record bears it out: not a mystery, but a system — the way a factory town insured itself, buried itself, paraded itself and governed its evenings, on paper, in rooms over the stores.

Sources:

1. The entries of this section and their sources, gathered: Howard (1907); Polk (1921); the Grand Lodge of Indiana's and the Grand Chapter's published records as cited; the Knights of Pythias' Indiana proceedings of 1913, 1930 and 1947; the Knights of Columbus' state directory and the council's own site and minutes; the Tribune's record of 2001, 2006 and 2007; the place record for the Masonic Temple, 1810 Went Ave, consulted November 2026.