Lost Temples

Eagle-eyed Freemasons are always on the lookout for hidden masonic symbols and signs. Some brothers can be forgiven for being somewhat familiar with a concrete structure and missing obvious clues of a long-forgotten temple. Walking down West 34th Street, just a few steps from 8th Avenue in midtown Manhattan, there is one glaring omission that even the most learned masonic brother may be shocked to know exists today.

Once part of a dream of German born businessman and theater impresario Oscar Hammerstein to create a chain of opera houses from New York to San Fransisco, this once struggling performance center would become a brief home to one of the United States largest Masonic concordant bodies.

Today, this building is The Manhattan Center.

Hammerstein and the American Opera

Located at 311 West 34th Street in Midtown Manhattan, the building was constructed by Hammerstein in 1906 as a home for his Manhattan Opera Company, a competitor to the more lavish Metropolitan Opera. Hammerstein announced at the building’s grand opening in November 1906 that he was out to “break the opera trust” and that this venture would be the beginning of the affordable American Opera.

Sensing unwanted competition, the Metropolitan Opera went into a non-compete arrangement with Hammerstein in 1910, paying the opera enthusiast $1.2 million to not stage operas for the next ten years. Hammerstein proceeded to update the building’s usage to include vaudeville and a variety of non-opera events.

After the death of Oscar Hammerstein in 1919, his third wife Emma Swift-Hammerstein, briefly controlled the family trust and lived in a three-room apartment on the top floor once shared with her husband. Disputes arose between the beneficiaries when Hammerstein’s daughters Stella Hammerstein-Keating and Rose Hammerstein-Tostevin sued his widow over an annuity left to them and ownership of the opera house. Emma Hammerstein claimed ownership in probate court through the Hammerstein Opera Company stock, which was later ruled null and void by the trial judge. Emma Swift-Hammerstein was evicted from the grand ballroom apartments on February 2, 1922, and the daughters paid off the remaining $150,000 mortgage on the property and listed the property to be sold almost immediately.

Scottish Rite Brief Residence

On March 7, 1922, the New York Consistory of Scottish Rite Masons completed the purchase of the Hammerstein Ballroom for a reported $1 million (over $18.7 million in 2024) from Hammerstein’s two daughters. The New York Consistory had been searching for a building for several months and other sites were considered before negotiations fell through. Commander in Chief, W.W. Griffith and a dedicated group of Scottish Rite Masons, led the negotiations for three months before closing the sale.

Closeup view of  one of the two Scottish Rite Double Eagle motifs

Post Masonic Period

It is not known why or when the Scottish Rite sold the building, but by 1926, Warner Brothers premiered Don Juan, the first commercially released feature film with a recorded musical soundtrack in the theater. Sam Warner set up the Vitaphone sound-on-disc system used to capture the 107-piece New York Philharmonic orchestra for these viewings.

The ownership of the ballroom changed hands multiple times over the next few decades. In 1939, the building was renamed the Manhattan Center, then a trade union had its headquarters in the 1940s. The Manhattan Center became a hot spot for “big band” dances as well as trade shows, boxing matches, union meetings and other social functions including concert performances, radio broadcasts and recordings by Harry Belafonte, Perry Como, Leonard Bernstein, the Grateful Dead and Bob Marley. The building was purchased by Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church in the late 1970’s and later sold and renamed Manhattan Center Studios in 1986. In 1997 the former theater was renamed the Hammerstein Ballroom and underwent extensive renovation, with the hand painted ceiling being completely restored.

But for a very brief period of this once dream of a German immigrant looking to expand his love of music for the American working class would be the home of in important part of American Freemasonry. We many never know the complete list of masonic degrees, meetings or events that took place at this location, but when walking a couple of blocks from Penn Station, a brother can share with a non-brother that Masonry is indeed everywhere.  

The Manhattan Center as it appears to today, with the engravcd text ANCIENT ACCEPTED SCOTTISH RITE

The Manhattan Opera House, 1907