Masonic Temple

This guide to the Masonic Temple in Philadelphia starts with architect James Windrim, only twenty-seven, winning the commission over every established architect in the city for a Grand Lodge hall on Broad Street budgeted at one million six hundred thousand dollars. It follows how that sum covered only the granite shell finished in 1873, not a chair, a carpet or a painted ceiling, before decorator George Herzog began adding halls styled after Egypt, Norman England and the Gothic Knights Templar.