The lodge buildings: from the Lincoln Block to North Main Street

1880 — 1926

The secret world built in public: The lodge record can be read off the street map. In 1880 the Masons met in rented rooms in the Lincoln Block at 118 Michigan Street, and the Odd Fellows owned the better asset: Chapman notes that the Odd Fellows' order "owns a large and fine hall, underneath which are two store rooms and a number of offices, which yield a good revenue" — the lodge as landlord, the rent roll underwriting the ritual floor above it. By 1907 the Masons had built: Howard describes the bodies meeting "in the beautiful Masonic Temple, recently erected at the northwest corner of Michigan street and La Salle avenue, one of the most elegant and imposing examples of the architecture of South Bend." The Odd Fellows by then met in what Howard calls "the oldest fraternal building in the city," at Main and Washington.

The 1921 directory spreads the world across downtown: the Masonic Temple at Michigan and LaSalle (its address also given as 301 North Michigan), the Odd Fellows Temple at 132–134 West Washington, the Knights of Pythias in their own K. of P. Hall at 234–236 South Michigan, the Eagles at the Eagles' Home, 321 North Michigan, the Moose in Moose Hall at 230 South Michigan, the Red Men at 118 East Jefferson, the Woodmen of the World in the W. O. W. Hall at 116–118 East Jefferson, and the Owls' Supreme Nest at 136–138 North Main. The Scottish Rite cathedral of 1924 on North Main Street closed the building age: the descriptive booklet the fraternity published for its new temple about 1926 survives in the St. Joseph County Public Library's collection, and the Library of Congress's photographic record a century later shows the Scottish Rite building standing beside a second fraternal temple, by then the home of the South Bend Civic Theatre. The buildings outlasted most of the orders that built them, which is the usual order of things in the lodge record.

Sources:

1. Chapman (1880) — the Lincoln Block hall; the Odd Fellows' revenue-producing hall.
2. Howard (1907), societies chapter — the new Masonic Temple at Michigan and LaSalle; the Odd Fellows' building at Main and Washington as the city's oldest fraternal building.
3. Polk (1921), "Secret and Benevolent Societies" — the 1921 addresses of the temples and halls.
4. Indiana Memory / St. Joseph County Public Library — W. D. Staples, descriptive booklet of the new South Bend Masonic Temple, ca. 1926.
5. Library of Congress, Carol M. Highsmith Archive (2016) — the Scottish Rite building and the adjacent fraternal temple, then the Civic Theatre's home.