Quote:
Originally Posted by ethereal_reality
It had three floors. The lower floor contained store rooms, a billiard room, café, kitchen and pantry. The 36-by-36-foot lodge hall, with seating for 400,
was on one side of the second floor, and the the other side had a large smoking room and the ladies’ reception room and parlor. The third floor consisted of apartments for lodge members.
A look inside. (supposedly)
dailybreeze
Either this is an entirely different place, or the oval auditorium is on the backside of the building shown in GW's photograph.
I see no exterior evidence of an oval room with windows. (I guess the windows could be fake...painted like tromp l'oeil)
The oval room would be visible in an aerial. (I believe the 3rd floor apartments were probably built around it)
|
More 'Pedro BPOE...
Another, slightly different, exterior shot:
According to the Water & Power archive, Hudson & Munsell were the archs:
A few excerpts from the Lodge's own history (
www.elks.org/lodges/LodgePages.cfm?LodgeNumber=966&ID=12509):
"Plans for a three-story building and ground was broken on November 23, 1908. The first task was to level the site. This, incidentally, was contracted to Don Knight and Jess Knight, uncle and father respectively, of California's Governor Goodwin J. Knight."
Note in the history that there was a big remodeling as the Depression set in...the top poo-bahs didn't have such great business foresight, it seems. Anyway, this may be when the oval room was changed:
"July 9, 1929 they authorized the borrowing of $15,000 recommended on the floor by the Trustees, for remodeling the Lodge room. When they got through, the cost was $30,000 and the Lodge was back financially where it started in 1910.... The stage was torn out, new seats, except officers' chairs, and rugs and drapes came in. The ceiling was lowered and the present beams built in to aid acustics....."
Then:
"The 1933 earthquake so damaged the upper reaches of the building that the cupola had to be removed. Later the tile was cast off to rid the building of pigeons."
I was in a fraternity in college, a rowdy one, great memories, but I never had any inclination to continue the whole mystical bit after school. I did find this particular BPOE item, presumably a symbol of power, amusing: