Efforts to save Masonic lodge come to an end

Published 11:45 am Monday, February 17, 2025

Dalton businessman Oliver Cobb joined Masonic Lodge 238 more than 40 years ago, and he said he still has fond memories of the building where lodge members used to meet at the corner of Hamilton and Emery streets.

“Those old men (at the lodge) helped make me what I am today,” he said. “I learned a lot about life and business from them, so did a lot of other young men.”

That’s why he has been working for the past two years as the head of a committee formed by lodge members, who now meet at the Mack Gaston Community Center, to save the building, which was condemned by the city as a safety hazard in 2023.

Cobb said those efforts have come to an end. He had pledged to put up his own money and showed a reporter a list of some of the city’s leading citizens who also pledged to put up money.

However, he said an architect’s estimate of what it would cost to repair the building, which has been unoccupied for 25 years, was more than he was anticipating, some $600,000. And that doesn’t include $50,000 to shore up the building’s foundation.

“And it could be more once we get into it,” he said. “I promised these people I’d spend their money like it was my money, and I can’t in good conscience ask them to spend that much money on this building.”

The lodge, which owns the building, has sent a letter to the city asking it to demolish the building and turn the site into a monument to the lodge and to the city’s Black community. At 600 S. Hamilton St., the lodge was once a vital part of Dalton’s Black business district. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.

Cobb said he learned much about Dalton’s Black history from the older men in the lodge. He learned that during the Jim Crow era, when accommodations for Blacks in Dalton were limited, lodge members would allow Black people visiting Dalton who arrived by train to temporarily stay on the first floor of the building.

The two-story building is across the road from the Emery Street Center, an African American heritage and multicultural center. The Emery Street Center was formerly the Emery Street School, which served Black students in Dalton from 1937-68 before Dalton public schools were integrated in 1968.

The Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation placed the lodge building on its Places in Peril list in 2019 and warned that stabilization of the building was urgent.

The trust wrote that “Masonic Lodge No. 238 stands at what was once a thriving commercial intersection at the heart of Dalton’s African American community. Featuring distinctive details, the lodge, built in 1915, offered commercial space on the ground floor while the second floor served as the Masonic meeting hall for African American members. The lodge formed a vital part of the fabric of a small but vibrant community that included a doctor’s office, a beauty shop, a funeral parlor and school.”

The City Council had a plaque placed on the front of the building that reads “The 600 block of McCamy Street, now South Hamilton Street, was the center of Black business from the 1900s to the 1950s and is therefore dedicated to those Black pioneers on this 19th day of October 1987.”

When the building was condemned in 2023, city officials agreed to take the property, demolish the building and create a monument at the site. Lodge officials asked for more time to save the building.

City officials said they had just become aware the lodge has been unable to save the building. A spokesman said city officials will have to reevaluate the building’s condition and see what the city’s options are.