Fotomoto

Monday, May 12, 2014

Colored Mason's Grand Lodge

Abandoned for 20 years, this building was once the Grand Lodge for a colored Masons group. It later was an NAACP headquarters, and housed practices and businesses for colored people during the civil rights movement.

Today, it sits forgotten. Forgotten by the owners, forgotten by the power company, and forgotten by the locals.

Entry gained for purposes of historical documenting. Do not enter. The security system is active.

While on the third floor, I pressed the elevator button for fun, knowing that the building had no power. The light inside the button turned on. Then, we heard the sound of the elevator motors coming alive. The car slowly screeched and ground its way through the rust of abandonment up to the third floor. The three tier doors to the car slowly scraped open, complaining about having not been used in twenty years. The light inside the car was flickering, and the ventilation fan vibrated and rattled. I stared into the car, in disbelief, as if I had pressed the "Launch" button in an abandoned missile silo, and a missile actually launched. The elevators not only somehow had power, but they still worked. On the roof of the building, the elevator equipment room sits open to the elements, the door ripped off. The motors and electronics have been exposed for many years, and black oil leaks from the elevator motors onto the floor.

The Lodge

Corridor

Grand Stage

Enter My Office

The Throne Room

Two Pins

NAACP

Grand Lodge 1966

The Office

Grand Mason's Haunt

Light Shines In

Footsie

Tools of Trade

Pink Ring

Get Drilled

Teething Pains

Peeled Chair

Sapphire

Temple

Faith

Vote

Register

Positively Ladies Room

Surgery

Forget me not, Baby

Hair Place

Vintage Technology

Illumination Suspended

Ascend

State of the Union

Tunes

Radiate

Hail to the King

Mason

Push to Peel

Piano #3

Men Room

Dentistry

Blue

Folding View

Flowery Fascade

Stylized

Jayhawks

Head Burners

Awards

Register

Lonely Lion

German Antiseptics

Here Lies

Casket

Piano #2

Charted

King 'n Queen

Sickly

Shakespeare Den

Tagged

Calc

King Edward

4 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. The Grand Lodge's need to come together & save this Temple

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  3. These photos are amazing. I sometimes wonder why places like this can't be left completely as it, and have tours of the space as a kind of time capsule. I love this building, and wouldn't change a thing. I am going to Birmingham next week to take pictures, and will be sure to wander by and shoot the outside of this gorgeous place. Thank you for the beautiful photo tour.

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  4. The building was designed by Robert Robinson Taylor, the first African-American student enrolled at MIT (in 1888) where he got to know Booker T. Washington. He is thought to be the first accredited African-American architect, and also designed many of the buildings at Tuskegee Institute and Selma University. He was honored with a Black Heritage postage stamp in 2015.

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