The Photographic Record

Three depictions of the building survive from before the 1980s, and for its first edition this site knew only two of them. The third, a newspaper photograph of the finished temple, had been in the project’s own files since April 2026.

Three images side by side: a 1930 drawing of the planned temple, a dark 1943 newspaper photograph of the finished three-story building, and a 1940 photograph of soldiers pitching tents in front of a light two-story building. — Three depictions of the building before the 1980s, assembled from the scans held: Cato’s drawing as printed in 1930 (left); the Chronicle’s spring 1943 photograph, contrast adjusted (center); and the Chronicle’s Dec. 5, 1940 photograph of Company F at “their armory,” whose building is not the temple (right).

The 1943 photograph

In the spring of 1943 the Chronicle ran a photograph of the building under the headline “Government Leases Lodge Building for Seven Years.” The caption reads: “The government has leased the above building, owned by the Home Life Assurance Company, and known as the Reagan Lodge Building at Eleventh and Harvard, to be converted into a 24-apartment building for war workers engaged in Houston defense plants. When remodeling is completed the latter part of May this will be the largest apartment north of Buffalo Bayou.” It is the earliest known image of the finished building, thirteen years after it opened, and the companion story names the lease agency, the rents, the managing agent, the negotiators, and the remodeling architect (see the 1943 entry).

Partial newspaper page: a dark halftone photograph of a three-story, flat-roofed masonry building seen from the corner, headed Government Leases Lodge Building for Seven Years, beside a news story. — Houston Chronicle, spring 1943 (the clipping carries no date): the photograph “Government Leases Lodge Building for Seven Years,” the earliest known image of the finished building, beside the story “Reagan Lodge to Be Changed Into Quarters” (contrast adjusted).

The 1940 photograph, and a second building at the corner

The Chronicle of December 5, 1940 shows Company F, 111th Engineers, pitching tents “at their armory, Eleventh and Harvard,” and the first edition of this site captioned it as showing the temple. The building behind the tents is a light-colored two-story block with plain rows of sash windows; nothing in it matches the temple’s pilastered brick elevations. The record carries a Woodmen of the World hall (1934) and an Odd Fellows hall (1939) at the same intersection, and an Adventist school at “11th and Harvard” from 1938 to 1947. One reading is that a second hall stood at the corner into the 1940s; the county’s records and the city’s 2008 inventory put a separate commercial building of about 1930 at 215 E. 11th and another across Eleventh at 220 E. 11th, but both stand at the Cortlandt end of the block, not at Harvard, so neither is an obvious match for a hall “at Eleventh and Harvard.” A 1930s Sanborn sheet for Block 199 would settle it. (A “vacant lot 100 by 150 feet,” once quoted from the 1930 announcement as evidence here, is not in the Chronicle’s text, which gives the lodge’s site as 225 by 132 feet; the phrase has not been traced.)

Top of a newspaper page, Houston Chronicle, December 5, 1940: soldiers pitching pup tents on a lawn in front of a light two-story building with tall sash windows, and below, an officer inspecting a field kitchen. — Houston Chronicle, Dec. 5, 1940, p. 17: “Gen. Birkhead Inspects National Guard Unit.” Above, Company F, 111th Engineers, pitching pup tents “at their armory, Eleventh and Harvard”; below, the general inspecting the company’s kitchen. The building behind the tents is a light two-story block, not the temple; which structure at the corner served as the armory is unproven.

The 1964 drawings

In July 1964 the Houston firm Wirtz, Calhoun, Tungate & Jackson drew the building for the International Fidelity Insurance Co. of Dallas (Commission 64-08). The two sheets shown here, photographed, are titled “Existing Building at Harvard and East 11th Streets”; the elevation labels the frieze “ornamental stone.” The full set is held privately. A renovation scheme, measurements to the inch, and a note of a faint Masonic emblem on the frieze have been reported from it, but none of them is legible on these photographs, and they have not been checked against the sheets; a square-on rescan of the whole set is the way to settle them.

Photograph of a 1964 architect's sheet with three elevation drawings of the building, south, west and north; the south elevation shows a canopied row of storefronts. — “Existing Building at Harvard and East 11th Streets … for the International Fidelity Insurance Co., Dallas”: the south (East 11th St.), west (Harvard St.) and north (parking area) elevations, Wirtz, Calhoun, Tungate & Jackson, Commission 64-08, July 10, 1964 (photograph of the sheet).

Photograph of an architectural drawing sheet on a wooden table: part of a first-floor plan with rooms and stairs, and a title block reading Existing building at Harvard and East 11th Streets. — First-floor plan of the “Existing Building at Harvard and East 11th Streets,” Wirtz, Calhoun, Tungate & Jackson, 1964 (photograph of the sheet; the commission number and date are not in the part photographed).

The cornerstone

Color photograph of a painted-over cornerstone set into a wall, inscribed Reagan Lodge No. 1037 A.F. & A.M. with a square-and-compasses emblem, the 1910 charter dates and a list of lodge officers. — The cornerstone as it survives at the building, painted over: “Reagan Lodge No. 1037 A.F. & A.M. · Chartered Dec. 12, 1910 · Instituted Dec. 31, 1910,” with the 1930 officer roster from A. A. Stone, W.M., to L. M. Barrett, Tiler (modern photograph).

What exists, what does not, what is still live

Held: the 1930 rendering; the 1943 photograph; the 1964 sheets; the 1982 display-ad drawing; a July 1985 Chronicle photograph of a developer posed in front of the building; the October 2000 and June 2001 Chronicle listing photographs; five modern exterior photographs, three by Patrick Feller (September 2019) and two from the lodge’s own website; and two Houston History Research Center album pages of lodge people (items 139 and 140 of MSS 0229), neither a view of the building.

Not found in any channel searched: a second period photograph from the 1930s through the 1950s; any marker or marker-page imagery at 1100 Harvard itself (the lodge’s 2010 marker and every photograph on its page stand at 1606 Heights Boulevard).

Closed avenues, not to be re-chased: the digitized Houston Press (no 1922–1946 coverage exists online); the University of Houston digital collections; the Library of Congress Sanborn scans (no Heights sheet after 1918 is digitized); the Library of Congress 1943 Vachon Houston set; the commercial photograph market from eBay to the wire agencies.

Still live: the Roos Photographs (MSS 0156, 1,024 photographs, 1920s–50s, scoped to Heights buildings) and the MSS 0229 remainder at the Julia Ideson Building; a 1942 Reagan Lodge degree photograph in the Robert Dixon collection (MSS 0089, Box 11, Folder 11A); the Houston Post morgue by story folder; the Chronicle’s 1968–80 negatives, which cover the pre-conversion years; the 1980 and 1983 National Register survey photographs; Reagan High School yearbooks 1930–35; the Bob Bailey Studios archive at the Briscoe Center; and the Texas Historical Commission’s marker application file, which may include photographs the lodge submitted.