The first Masonic Hall was built in 1765 in Marseille, France. A decade later in May, 1775, the cornerstone of what would come to be known as Freemasons’ Hall, London, was laid in solemn ceremonial form spurring a trend that would continue to present day. Most lodges, however, could not afford to build their own facilities and instead rented rooms above commercial establishments (hotels, banks and opera houses were the most common landlords). With permanent facilities, the term “Masonic Temple” began to be applied not just to the symbolic formation of the Temple, but also to the physical place in which this took place. It began to be applied to the lodge rooms themselves. (A similar transfer took place with the term Masonic Lodge, which in ritual terms refers to the people assembled and not to the place of assemblage. In common usage, however, it began to be applied to the place as well as the people.)
In smaller towns the trend was different. Here, instead of building large impressive buildings in the hopes of attracting multiple commercial tenants, the local lodges tended to build more modest structures, with space for a single tenant, a small meeting hall for public rental, or no rental space at all. In addition, especially in the United States, lodges founded in established communities would purchase buildings that had historic value as lodge members wanted their new lodge to be associated with the history of their local community like their older counterparts. Thus they looked to purchase old churches, schools and the homes of community founders, which they would convert into lodge meeting space. These too began to be known as “Masonic Temples”.
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