Historic Philadelphia

✧
Above: Freemason’s Lodge, long gone, once
stood north of Second and Walnut Streets. It
was the first Masonic building erected in the
western world. Pennsylvania Masons met
there from 1755 to 1768 and from 1778
to 1785.
Below: William Allen, first grand master of
the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania.
Bottom, right: Tun Tavern, which stood near
Front and Walnut Streets, was the site of the
first meeting of the Grand Lodge of
Pennsylvania, January 24, 1732. The
United States Marine Corps also was
founded there in 1775.
THE GRAND LODGE OF FREE AND
ACCEPTED MASONS OF PENNSYLVANIA
The building is stately and ornate, in the heart
of Philadelphia, on Broad Street across from the
north side of City Hall: the Masonic Temple,
home of the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted
Masons of Pennsylvania. As architecture, it is a
masterpiece. Historically, it is the first Grand
Lodge of freemasonry in America.
Craft Masonry has existed since antiquity.
The earliest known Masonic document, dated
about 1390, describes a royal charter for an
assembly of Masons in 926 A.D. Guilds of
stonemasons in the Middle Ages are believed
to be the roots from which the modern
Masonic brotherhood evolved. In the course
of time, craft Masons, or “operative Masons”
welcomed non-craftsmen, or “speculative
Masons,” into their ranks.
The City of Philadelphia was thirty-five years
old in the year 1717 when, in London, a
number of Masonic lodges joined to establish a
central governing body, the first Grand Lodge in
the world.
Masons were in Philadelphia even before
there was a Grand Lodge there. In a letter in
1715, the royal tax collector of the Port of
Philadelphia mentioned that he had “spent a few
evenings of festivity with my Masonic brethren.”
In 1730 the duke of Norfolk, as the grand
master of the Grand Lodge of England,
deputized Colonel Daniel Coxe of New Jersey
to be grand master of the Provinces of New
York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Benjamin
Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette reported on
December 8, 1730, that “there are several
Lodges of FREE-MASONS erected in this
province…” meaning Pennsylvania.
The oldest lodge records from 1731 show
that the grand master in Pennsylvania was
William Allen, then twenty-seven years old. He
was a merchant and lawyer who, at about the
same time, was helping to buy up Welsh-owned
lots at Fifth and Chestnut Streets to be the site of
the new State House, later to be called Independence
Hall. Allen was mayor of Philadelphia in
1735 and royal chief justice of the Province of
Pennsylvania from 1750 to 1771.
In 1765 Allen developed Allentown,
Pennsylvania. He gave major financial support
to the Pennsylvania Hospital, America’s first. In
Allen’s warehouse at Second and Arch Streets
were held the first classes of the Academy of
Philadelphia, which became the University of
Pennsylvania. Allen’s estate in northwest
Philadelphia, called Mount Airy, gave its name to
a city neighborhood, where the first shots of the
Battle of Germantown were fired. Allen became
the Grand Master of Masons in Pennsylvania
again in 1749 and served until 1761.
In 1732, Benjamin Franklin was appointed
to a leadership role, that of Junior Warden in
the Grand Lodge. Franklin’s career was
unparalleled: publisher, statesman, philosopher,
scientist, inventor, diplomat, and signer of the
Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution of the United States. He became
grand master in 1734 and in that year produced
Anderson’s Constitutions, the first Masonic book
printed in America. Forty-five years later,
Franklin served as master of the Masonic Lodge
of the Seven Sisters in Paris, France.
HISTORIC PHILADELPHIA
136