‘Happy anniversary to our matinée lodge’

    

St. Cecile Lodge 568 will celebrate its 160th anniversary this month with a rededication ceremony on Sunday the 22nd, to be led by the Grand Master, with brunch to follow.

St. Cecile is the only lodge I can name with brunch in the same sentence! This historic lodge is a neighbor of my own lodge, Publicity 1000, in the Fourth Manhattan District. 

The lodge was warranted by the Grand Lodge of New York on June 28, 1865 after six months of meeting Under Dispensation. The brethren actually are meeting right now in the Empire Room of Masonic Hall for its March Stated Communication. They gather on the first Tuesday at 1 p.m., making St. Cecile what used to be called a “matinée lodge.” At the time of its launch, St. Cecile was believed to have been the first daytime lodge in the United States, tiling its meetings at three in the afternoon.

Writing in One Thousand Communications, the history of this lodge penned by its historian and published in 1907, Charles M. Williams explains: 

Those members of the fraternity usually employed nocturnally in the theatres and various newspaper offices had received their degrees from time to time as best they could, affixed their names to the rolls and were rarely seen again in lodge meetings. Thus the membership of night workers was divided among many lodges, assembling in places widely separated, and they seldom if ever met their business associates in the lodge room. Then again, as the chances of regular attendance were precarious, few night workers had the temerity to accept office and it was rarely indeed that any of them reached a position of prominence in the lodge to which he belonged. Peculiarly happy, therefore, was the idea of forming a “matinée” lodge for the accommodation of night workers. Conveniently meeting in the afternoon, a Masonic rendezvous was provided where the gregarious lychnobite could in his hour of leisure mingle with the brethren, enjoying in comfort the manifold advantages of fellowship…

In due time the application, properly endorsed by the requisite number of contemporary lodges, was forwarded to R. W. Robert D. Holmes, Deputy Grand Master. On January 25, 1865, he graciously granted St. Cecile, as the new lodge was called, permission to work Under Dispensation. Named in honor of St. Cecilia, patron of musicians, it was decided to give the word the French form, Cecile, as a compliment, it is said, to Mrs. Cecile Robir Holmes, the beautiful and accomplished wife of the Deputy Grand Master…

Inquiring minds find a fascination in getting back to the beginnings of things. Delight is found in tracing the great stream to the little rill, winding its devious way o'er grassy fields, through dark defiles, purling musically the while in its rocky course, until at length is found its source in the clear, limpid waters of the bubbling spring high up on the mountainside. In somewhat similar fashion are we conducted, my brethren, by the founders of St. Cecile Lodge to the very fountainhead of the highest ideals of Masonic tradition - the practice of charity and the cultivation of music. However short of the full measure of perfection the members may have been, it cannot truthfully be said that they have failed to observe faithfully the foregoing precepts.

For tickets to the March 22 festivities, click here.