On your right, look for a four-story pressed-brick building on a granite base, trimmed in limestone and gray brick, with a red-tile hipped roof and a two-story porch marked by paired Ionic columns.
This temple feels like Asheville turning an idea into stone. On the first of July, nineteen oh nine, Mount Hermon Lodge number one hundred eighteen joined with the Royal Arch Masons of Asheville to buy this lot. A few years later, they sat down together and planned a building that could hold a whole community: a reading room, library, offices, lobby, banquet hall, and kitchen on the lower levels... lodge rooms above... and upper floors for the Scottish Rite, a branch of Freemasonry with its own ceremonies and teachings.
Architect Richard Sharp Smith gave that dream its face. He came from England, worked in New York for Richard Morris Hunt, and then came south to supervise construction of Biltmore House. In May of nineteen thirteen, McPherson Construction Company agreed to build this place for fifty-six thousand two hundred sixty dollars, about one million eight hundred thousand dollars today. On the twenty-ninth of April, nineteen fifteen, the Masonic Temple Company accepted the finished building, and its original plans, deeds, and survey maps still remain in the temple records.
You can see Zebulon Baird Vance, who petitioned Mount Hermon at age twenty-three and completed his next Masonic degrees, the ceremonial steps of membership, before later serving as governor. Another Asheville Mason, Robert Brank Vance, rose from this lodge to become Grand Master of North Carolina.
If you're curious about hours, it generally opens Tuesday through Saturday from ten to five, and closes Sunday and Monday. Some buildings shelter people; this one shelters memory. When you're ready, continue on and let Asheville tell you its next chapter.
