A cornerstone notice that should not exist

On January 12, 1972 the Post carried a notice that has never been explained: “Cornerstone ceremonies by the Grand Lodge of Texas, personal representative of Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Texas, will be held on the corner of 11th and Harvard Sts., 2 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 15,” with a weather fallback “in the Reagan Lodge Hall.”

The temple’s own cornerstone had been leveled in 1930, and Reagan Lodge had been gone from the corner since 1935. A Grand Lodge cornerstone ceremony is a formal, minuted act, so an authentic event should have left a trace in the 1972 Proceedings, which have not been checked. Such ceremonies were never reserved for Masonic buildings: Reagan Lodge itself laid the cornerstones of a Baptist church in 1912 and of Reagan High School in 1925. Whether this was a ceremony for another structure at the intersection, a re-dedication, a typesetting error, or recycled copy is one of this history’s open questions. It sits with the other evidence that the old lodge room stayed a rented Masonic hall through the 1970s.