‘Mecca marks a magician’s birth’

    

Mecca Shrine chose McSorley’s
for its premier First Friday bash.

The nobles of Mecca Shrine, the mother shrine of the entire Ancient Arabic Order of Nobles of the Mystic Shrine world, gathered at McSorley’s Friday night to commemorate the birth of one of their own.

As you’ll see on his Mecca petition, Houdini
called himself an author, lecturer, and mystifier.

Harry Houdini, one of the most famous celebrities of the early twentieth century, was a magician, illusionist, and escape artist whose exploits drew thousands who came to watch in an age when mass media meant newspapers.

History says Houdini’s birthdate was March 24,
but Houdini, on his Mecca petition, said April 6.

The 150th anniversary of Houdini’s birth will be March 24 April 6, but Mecca has a new inspiration to get together and party: First Fridays.

Just launched, on the first Friday of the month, the nobles and their ladies will convene somewhere for food and drinks, not unlike the Lucky 7 plan at Azim Grotto, when the prophets do likewise on the seventh day of the month (this Thursday, in fact, at the Trailer Park down the street from Masonic Hall).

Houdini was a Master Mason at St. Cecile Lodge 568.

I haven’t been there since before the pandemic.
Good to see it hasn’t changed!

I guess Thom ordered his ale off the kids menu.

Mecca says they donated an antique fez
to McSorley’s museum.

The photos speak for themselves. Good to see Deputy Grand Master Steve Rubin getting out of the house for once!

(The Magpie Mason is not a Shriner. I had been with Salaam many years ago. What happened was the Knights of the North had a demit contest and—just to get on the scoreboard, y’understand—I gave up the Shrine and Sciots.)

All photos courtesy Mecca Shrine 1.

     

‘Tompkins remembrance next Friday’

   

Magpie file photo

Daniel D. Tompkins bust at the church.

The brethren of Tompkins Lodge 471 will visit Daniel D. Tompkins’ burial place next Friday for their annual memorial ceremony.

With the Tompkins Historical Society, which will hold a meeting at McSorley’s after the event, the lodge will gather at St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery on East Tenth Street at 6 p.m. on Friday the second for the service.

Daniel D. Tompkins was made a Mason at Hiram Lodge 72 in Westchester County. He became Grand Secretary of our Grand Lodge, and he served as the first Sovereign Grand Commander of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite Northern Masonic Jurisdiction. He seemed to have eked out some existence outside the fraternity, having served as:

• Assemblyman, State of New York (1804)
• Associate Justice, State Supreme Court (1804-07)
• Governor of New York (1807-17)
• Vice President of the United States (1817-25)

Magpie file photo

Tompkins’ grave at St. Mark’s Church.

Tompkins bankrupted himself raising and equipping troops to fight England in the War of 1812. He died at his home in Staten Island on June 11, 1825. The Masons of the lodge named for him seem to do this about that date each year. I recommend checking it out. St. Mark’s is a historic church worth visiting in its own right. And, again, McSorley’s is just a few blocks down.

For some background on what the first such service was like, click here. And try this one for more Daniel D. Tompkins info.

     

‘Civil War Lodge of Research in NYC’

    
The fall meeting of Civil War Lodge of Research No. 1865 will take place Saturday, October 2 at 10 a.m. in the Renaissance Room of Masonic Hall in Manhattan.

Manhattan? Isn’t that an unusual location for a meeting of a research lodge focused on the role of Freemasonry during the Civil War? Not really. New York City figures fairly largely in the annals of the war, including what became known as the New York Draft Riots.

Four months after the enactment of the Enrollment Act of Conscription, which established a military draft system that preyed upon the poor by allowing those with money to send replacements into the army in their stead, and only days after the bloodbath at Gettysburg, thousands of New Yorkers fearful of being fed into the military meatgrinder terrorized the city’s East Side. The extent of that show of mobocracy perhaps was not seen again in the United States until the rioting in South Central Los Angeles in 1992. Union troops had to be deployed to New York to restore order. If I remember correctly, the film Gangs of New York concludes with a riot combatted by artillery raining upon the city. That is a depiction of the Draft Riots.

(I have no idea if this is what attracts the lodge to New York City, but it’s worth mentioning.)

After the meeting, some of the brethren will visit Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument (Riverside Drive at 89th Street) and Grant’s Tomb (Riverside at 122nd). They also might want to check out Cooper Union, where Abraham Lincoln’s oratory propelled him to national prominence. And from there of course one must visit McSorley’s, which merits a full day’s attention in itself.

Masonic Hall is the home of the Grand Lodge of New York, located at 71 West 23rd St. in Manhattan. The Renaissance Room is on the sixth floor.

Civil War Lodge of Research is based in Virginia, a state that is home to, I think, six research lodges!
   

‘Can Masonry cure insomnia?’

     
No, I don’t mean boring meetings.

Insomnia grips the Magpie Mason this time of year. Not even my midnight brandy helps anymore. (Don’t hurt either, so I ain’t giving it up.) To pass the hours leading up to my morning constitutional of steak & eggs, coffee, tobacco, I read. On one of the final nights of 2009 I chose to revisit a great book that I read upon its publication in 1992, while still a university student who knew that good writers read great writers. Ergo my limitless appreciation for Joseph Mitchell.

Mitchell (1908-96) wrote for The New Yorker from the 1930s to the ’60s. He remained on staff for decades thereafter, still on the payroll without actually producing anything, which I suspect is the unspoken goal of a lot of writers. I planned on devoting a paragraph to describing his work, but this obituary anticipates what I was going to say.

But back to the book: Up in the Old Hotel is an anthology of Mitchell’s most famous journalistic essays. In fact, it is a compilation of several of his previous books, which themselves consisted of his three dozen best written, most known feature stories. “The Old House at Home,” his 8,200-word paen to McSorley’s Old Ale House published in 1940 begins the book. I was hooked. (McSorley’s is one of my favorite places on earth. An honorary Irish-Catholic, my affinity for this establishment could be called atavistic.)

Don’t let the sepia fool ya. This photo was taken last November 9, when I had the good fortune to have lunch with a large group of Masons at this historic establishment.

So I’m up this morning reading. The story is titled “Mr. Hunter’s Grave” and, true to Mitchell’s method, it is a high def portrait of an eccentric New Yorker who is invisible amid the cityscape, yet king of his own corner. Mitchell’s New York City doesn’t really exist anymore. The highways built during the 1950s, the poverty of the ’60s, the chaos of the ’70s, the redevelopment in the ’80s, and the Giuliani Revolution in the ’90s all played their roles in eradicating nearly every semblance of what might be termed Old New York. Mother Bloomberg isn’t helping either. Being prohibited by law from smoking my Peterson inside McSorley’s is a hate crime.

But I digress.

I actually was starting to get sleepy a few hours ago, but I didn’t want to leave Mitchell just walking up Bloomingdale Road in Staten Island by himself. I read on, but what is very strange – and in fact is the reason I’m writing this – is that some supernatural instinct was telling me our Mr. Hunter is a Brother Mason. One stranger speaking to Mitchell describes him thusly:

“The man to speak to is Mr. George H. Hunter. He’s chairman of the board of trustees of the African Methodist church. I know Mr. Hunter. He’s eighty-seven years old, and he’s one of those strong, self-contained old men you don’t see much any more. He was a hard worker, and he retired only a few years ago, and he’s fairly well-to-do. He’s a widower, and he lives by himself and does his own cooking. He’s got quite a reputation as a cook. His church used to put on clambakes to raise money, and they were such good clambakes they attracted people from all over this part of Staten Island, and he always had charge of them. On some matters, such as drinking and smoking, he’s very disapproving and strict and stern, but he doesn’t feel that way about eating; he approves of eating. He’s a great Bible reader. He’s read the Bible from cover to cover, time and time again. His health is good, and his memory is unusually good. He remembers the golden age of the oyster business on the South Shore, and he remembers its decline and fall, and he can look at any old field or tumble-down house between Rossville and Tottenville and tell you who owns it now and who owned it fifty years ago, and he knows who the people were who are buried out in the Sandy Ground cemetery – how they lived and how they died, how much they left, and how their children turned out. Not that he’ll necessarily tell you what he knows, or even a small part of it....”

I suppose some neuron encoded with the memory of this story from 18 years ago might have somehow sparked in my brain the notion that Mr. Hunter is a Freemason, which is very unlikely because I had only a general curiosity about Masonry at that time. Nor is it as though this book is full of Masonic references. A 10-page exploration of what used to be called “The New York Steak Dinner” (1939) makes one quick reference to Mecca Temple. The famous piece about Joe Gould (1964) describes a chapter of the putative “Oral History” of which Mitchell reports: “Gould’s father had belonged to the Universalist Church and the Masons, and his funeral service had been conducted jointly by the pastor of the local Universalist church, and the chaplain and the Worshipful Master of the local Masonic lodge.”

I guess my hunch had a lot to do with Hunter’s characteristics, as explained above, but it was a strong bodement. I felt compelled to continue and confirm.

Et voilà.

“On another wall was a framed certificate stating that George Henry Hunter was a life member of St. John’s Lodge No. 29 of the Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons. While I was looking at this, Mr. Hunter came into the room. ‘I’m proud of that,’ he said. ‘There’s several Negro Mason organizations, but Prince Hall is the biggest, and I’ve been a member since 1906. I joined the Masons the same year I built this house. Did you notice my floors?’ I looked down. The floor boards were wide and made of some kind of honey-colored wood, and they were waxed and polished. ‘Virgin spruce,’ he said. ‘six inches wide. Tongue and groove. Built to last. In my time, that was the idea, but in this day and time, that’s not the idea. They’ve got more things nowadays – things, things, things: kitchen stoves you could put in the parlor just to look at; refrigerators so big they’re all out of reason; cars that reach from here to Rossville – but they aren’t built to last. They’re built to wear out. And that’s the way people want it.’ ”

He is speaking in 1956!

Rest in peace, Bro. Hunter. Requiem in pacem. But now it’s time for breakfast.

Journalist Joseph Mitchell on the waterfront he loved so much.

Here is an interview of Roger Angell and David Remnick on Charlie Rose upon the death of Mitchell in 1996. There is mention of the story Mitchell wrote of Bro. Hunter.