Added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 17, 2009

This simple brick-faced building is the long-serving home of the LA chapter of the Prince Hall Freemasons. The Prince Hall order is the oldest Black fraternal organization in America, and currently the largest, with some 300,000 initiated members. It dates back to the late 18th century, when African Americans were excluded from membership in mainstream Masonic lodges. In 1784, the Black abolitionist Prince Hall successfully petitioned the Premier Grand Lodge of England to establish the first African Lodge in Boston.  

There’s not a ton of info to dig up about the Prince Hall Masonic Temple building in South LA. The Los Angeles Sentinel newspaper archives are full of stories of community events that happened there from the ‘40s through the ‘60s. Coffee socials, dances, performances, even a marksmanship demonstration by LA’s Chief of Police James E. Davis – they all happened inside this utilitarian building. But we don’t know who designed or built the Temple, and how exactly the Masons used it in the years right after it was constructed. I keep digging through old issues of Prince Hall Masonic Digest on the Oakland Public Library website in hopes that I’ll find something juicy. But even the 1952 issue with the E. 50th Street building on the cover offers no clues. Its beginnings are nearly as mysterious as the rites that Freemasons practice, and the secrets they swear to keep. 

What I could glean is that a “Prince Hall Masonic Temple Improvement Association” incorporated in 1925, with the aim of building a new hall on E. 50th Street. Apparently the Masons in Los Angeles had been sharing a space at 1209 South Central Avenue with other local societies for decades, and they wanted a space to call their own – presumably much closer to the growing commercial and social corridor that was coalescing further north up Central Avenue (see my South LA archives for more historic landmarks from the area). 

When this Temple was built in 1926, societies like the Masons, the Order of Odd Fellows and the Order of Elks were super popular, and vital for community building. The Temple’s NRHP nomination form cites 33 different fraternal orders in the city as of 1921, and directories in the Los Angeles Sentinel indicate that multiple Masonic lodges were holding non-overlapping, bi-weekly meetings at the Temple for decades.  

Some of these groups existed mostly as social clubs; many had charitable and community service components. These kinds of fraternal organizations often functioned as incubators for political and socioeconomic advancement, especially important at a time when the Black population in LA was growing, and increasingly segregated through racist housing covenants. Historian David Fahey points out that, in the years before the NAACP took off, Black fraternal orders formed networks of experienced Black lawyers to fight against discriminatory state laws and defend themselves against attacks on their right to exist. 

One final historical tidbit: Masonry officially took hold in California in 1850, when the mothership Grand Lodge of California was founded. The equivalent Prince Hall organization, known as the Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Free & Accepted Masons, was established in CA just five years later. And while these two umbrella groups have operated in parallel in California ever since, it wasn’t until 1996 that they formally recognized each other, thus opening up the possibility of joint meetings and philanthropic projects. 

Why did it take so long? As Ian A. Stewart explains for Freemason.org, Masonic lodges in the 19th century employed “the American doctrine” – a policy that held that only one grand lodge was permitted in each territory, and if another one showed up, you couldn’t recognize it as legit, even if you wanted to. For the record, freemason.org lists more than a dozen Masonic organizations in California today.  

Sources & Recommended Reading

+Prince Hall Masonic Temple’s NRHP nomination form

+PRINCE HALL MASONRY (freemason.org)

+“What is Freemasonry?” (www.mwphglcal.org)

+Dickie, John: “What the Freemasons Taught the World About the Power of Secrecy” (Time.com, 2020)

+Fahey, David M: “African American Fraternal Societies” (The American Mosaic: The African American Experience, ABC-CLIO, 2022)

+Stewart, Ian A: “A New Beginning” (California Freemason, 2021) 

+“Chief Davis and His Crack Pistol Team at Masonic” (Los Angeles Sentinel, February 27, 1936, via ProQuest)

+“Prince Hall Lodge Directory” (Los Angeles Sentinel, November 14,1963, via ProQuest)