A $140,000 temple is announced

On March 23, 1930, both the Post-Dispatch and the Chronicle carried the announcement: Reagan Lodge would erect a $140,000 building at the northeast corner of Eleventh and Harvard, designed by Lamar Q. Cato, a Houston architect who reportedly had served as city architect in 1919. In the Chronicle’s account the basement would hold club rooms “with bowling alleys and a small banquet room”; the first floor the auditorium and stage, the secretary’s office, a library and ladies’ reception rooms; the second floor clubrooms and lodge rooms for the Eastern Star and the Rainbow Girls; and the third floor “lodge rooms for the DeMolay members.” No Houston league-play coverage of the bowling alleys has been found; their documented life is architectural, not athletic.

Cato’s perspective rendering ran with the announcement: the building as Houston first saw it, on paper before it stood in brick. The papers promised it ready for use by Thanksgiving.