‘Amity’s time capsule opened’

    

A Knights Templar ceramic piece was among the artifacts recovered from the time capsule in Ohio’s Zanesville Masonic Temple. (All photos from WHIZ.)

The time capsule rescued from the ruins of the Zanesville Masonic Temple in Ohio, which burned down in January, was opened Saturday.

About sixty Freemasons and friends of the fraternity gathered for a fundraising dinner to benefit Lodge of Amity 5, which lost its home when the registered landmark burned, at which time the perfectly sealed metal box was breached by use of a power saw, local media have reported. Inside were various mementos of U.S. and Masonic coinage, postage stamps, ceramics, and many documents, photos, and ephemera, all practically as pristine as when they were deposited into the box in 1902.

Click here for Zanesville Times Recorder coverage and here for WHIZ photos and video. And here for previous Magpie news.

     

‘Masonic time capsule to be opened’

    

WHIZ photo

Another chapter in the catastrophic demise of the Zanesville Masonic Temple in Ohio three months ago will be written when the time capsule secreted in the structure will be opened in June.

WHIZ reported last week that the repository, which was installed on St. John Baptist Day 1902, will be opened on June 25.

The building, no longer owned by a Masonic entity but still home to Lodge of Amity 5 and other groups, was destroyed by fire in January.

The revelation of the box’s contents will be the highlight of a dinner at a local college; the event will be a fundraiser to prepare for building a new meeting place for the lodge.

     

‘Lodge of Amity update’

    

One silver lining in the ashen remains of the Zanesville Masonic Temple is the recovery of a time capsule secreted in the building’s southwest(!) corner.

Built in 1902-03, the six-story Renaissance Revival home of Ohio’s Lodge of Amity 5 and other Masonic groups was destroyed by fire last month. The time capsule was deposited during a St. John the Baptist Day 1902 cornerstone ceremony led by Grand Master Ike Robinson. (I’ll say it’s strange how the Grand Lodge of Ohio 1902 Book of Proceedings is nearly silent on this event, one of only two Masonic temple cornerstone-layings that year.)

The time capsule will be opened on a date to be announced, local media say, citing a statement from Mayor Don Mason, himself a Past Master of the lodge.

In a social media post last week, the lodge brethren say: “Though the fire may have taken our building and relics spanning the last 217 years, it did not take our spirit. The Lodge of Amity No. 5 would like for everyone to know that we are still here and will continue to be part of the Zanesville community. While we continue to recover from this loss and evaluate our future, we will meet at LaFayette Lodge No. 79…. Our meetings will continue to be at 7 p.m. on the third Wednesday of each month.”

     

‘Fire destroys Ohio Masonic landmark’

    

Zanesville Times Recorder

Flames consumed the six-story Zanesville Masonic Temple in Ohio late last night, local media are reporting, leaving only the exterior walls, which will have to be demolished if they don’t fall on their own. No fatalities nor injuries have been reported.

One man, found hanging out a third floor window, was rescued, as were an unknown number of animals inside.

Zanesville is a city of approximately 25,000, and is situated 52 miles east of Columbus. This awful news comes one week after a suspicious fire damaged the headquarters of the Grand Lodge of Ireland in Dublin.

Comments on social media say officer jewels made by Paul Revere were among the artifacts lost to the flames.

visitzanesville.com

Located on North Fourth Street, it was home to Lodge of Amity 5 and other Masonic groups, plus a number of small businesses and artist and performance spaces. The building, no longer owned by a Masonic entity, was constructed 1902-03, and was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1990. Its exterior was Renaissance Revival; the interior was the Egyptian Revival style that was popular at the turn of the century. 

The spectacular blaze was so powerful that nearby buildings had to be evacuated, including the county jail, according to several local media reports. Streets surrounding the temple are closed in anticipation of the remnant’s demolition, meaning neighboring businesses and other entities are on hiatus.

The smallish municipality also is home to another Masonic temple, about five miles from the destroyed site, where La Fayette Lodge 79 and other bodies meet.

Donald Mason, mayor, is a Past Master of the lodge.

Issue 34 of JTMS.

If you don’t know the building, but think it looks familiar, it’s possible you may recognize it from the Fall 2016 issue of The Journal of the Masonic Society, which featured a painting of the temple on its cover, and included an article on Page 19. Artist Ron Cole, who had a gallery inside the building, made this temple the subject of a painting in 2016, rendering “the building as it appeared during its heyday c. 1926,” according to the article.

Lodge of Amity will reach its 210th anniversary a week from tomorrow. Among its famous roll is Hudson River School artist Thomas Cole.

     

‘A birthday look at Thomas Cole’

     

Self-Portrait, by Thomas Cole, 1836, oil on canvas.

Owned by New-York Historical Society.

“My Birthday. Once more has the Wheel of Life revolved [and] again advances on the untried road of Another Year.”

Thomas Cole

Speaking of 19th century American painters who were Ohio Freemasons (see post below), today is the 219th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Cole. He will be associated with New York forever, but it was Lodge of Amity 5 in Zanesville, Ohio where he became a Mason. Born in England, Cole emigrated to the United States in 1818 with his family, settling in Steubenville, Ohio.

It is the Hudson Valley of New York that is inextricably bonded to Cole the artist, thanks to his landscapes depicting, or otherwise inspired by, the scenic region.

Masonic messages are found in Cole’s works. These are not overt, but are recognizable by the initiated eye. I don’t think The Architect’s Dream is among those, but still is worth discussing:

In the distance, an Egyptian pyramid looms over Egyptian, Greek, and Roman temples while, in the foreground, a Gothic-style church juts from the trees. Oil on canvas, 1840.

Cole’s works associated with Masonic thought are his four The Voyage of Life oil-on-canvas paintings from 1842, showing Childhood, Youth, Manhood, and Old Age.

The Voyage of Life: Childhood

The Voyage of Life: Youth

The Voyage of Life: Manhood

The Voyage of Life: Old Age

The National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC holds and exhibits these paintings. Its website says:

Cole’s renowned four-part series traces the journey of an archetypal hero along the “River of Life.” Confidently assuming control of his destiny and oblivious to the dangers that await him, the voyager boldly strives to reach an aerial castle, emblematic of the daydreams of “Youth” and its aspirations for glory and fame. As the traveler approaches his goal, the ever-more-turbulent stream deviates from its course and relentlessly carries him toward the next picture in the series, where nature’s fury, evil demons, and self-doubt will threaten his very existence. Only prayer, Cole suggests, can save the voyager from a dark and tragic fate.

From the innocence of childhood, to the flush of youthful overconfidence, through the trials and tribulations of middle age, to the hero’s triumphant salvation, The Voyage of Life seems intrinsically linked to the Christian doctrine of death and resurrection. Cole’s intrepid voyager also may be read as a personification of America, itself at an adolescent stage of development. The artist may have been issuing a dire warning to those caught up in the feverish quest for Manifest Destiny, that unbridled westward expansion and industrialization would have tragic consequences for both man and nature.

     

‘Cole mining’

    
Way back a long time ago, when I was a junior in high school, my teacher of U.S. history sadistically assigned his class, as requisite to passing the course, what seemed like impossibly obscure topics for research papers. Obscurity is in the eye of the beholder, of course, and to a 16-year-old underachiever, the prospect of delving into the life and work of one Thomas Cole, father of the Hudson River School in the fine arts, was akin to being sentenced to a gulag to mine coal, barehanded. This was far before the internet, Google, and the rest; it was merely the dawn of the PC age itself. Research meant legwork at the library, and my subject Thomas Cole required travel to the public libraries of neighboring towns which, to me, was as unheard of as Cole himself. It was a good thing my friend Tim had access to a car – would have been even better if one of us had a driver’s license – so to foreign libraries we went to achieve our respective advancements in knowledge.

If you had tried to tell me then that decades later I would happily drive 250 miles to enjoy lectures on topics ranging from our Mr. Cole to the KKK, I would have smacked you, but there I was at the Scottish Rite’s National Heritage Museum in Lexington, Massachusetts last April being impressed by David Bjelajac’s talk, augmented by PowerPoint graphics of Cole’s work.

It’s funny what happens when you get a little culture in you.

Turns out Thomas Cole was a Freemason who made symbols familiar to the initiated eye key components in some of his work. Professor Bjelajac will appear at Cedar Grove, the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, on Sunday, March 6 to present his lecture Thomas Cole, Freemasonry and the American Hercules.

Cedar Grove

Thomas Cole National Historic Site

218 Spring Street

Catskill, New York

The lecture will begin at 2 p.m., and tickets, at $8 each, will be available on a first come, first served basis.

From the Cedar Grove website:

Thomas Cole, Freemasonry and the American Hercules

Thomas Cole became a Freemason in Zanesville, Ohio, during the summer of 1822, and soon composed sublime mountainous views that drew upon Masonry’s mysterious emblems. First publicized in New York newspapers by William Dunlap, a brother Mason, Cole’s paintings captured the patronage of the Empire State’s Masonic elite. David Bjelajac, Professor of Art and Human Sciences at George Washington University, reinterprets Cole’s The Titan’s Goblet (1833), which honored New York Governor De Witt Clinton, Erie Canal builder, art academician and leading Freemason. This small, enigmatic painting draws upon Masonic ritual and Herculean myth, and looks forward to Cole’s famed Course of Empire and Voyage of Life series.



The Titan's Goblet is on exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.



Thomas Cole's The Voyage of Life series
is on view at the National Gallery of Art.
This is Childhood.



The Voyage of Life: Youth.



The Voyage of Life: Manhood.



The Voyage of Life: Old Age.

Please pardon these low resolution images. Reproductions of these oil-on-canvas works are available in various media if you shop around.

From the National Gallery’s website:

Cole’s renowned four-part series traces the journey of an archetypal hero along the “River of Life.” Confidently assuming control of his destiny and oblivious to the dangers that await him, the voyager boldly strives to reach an aerial castle, emblematic of the daydreams of “Youth” and its aspirations for glory and fame. As the traveler approaches his goal, the ever-more-turbulent stream deviates from its course and relentlessly carries him toward the next picture in the series, where nature’s fury, evil demons, and self-doubt will threaten his very existence. Only prayer, Cole suggests, can save the voyager from a dark and tragic fate.

From the innocence of childhood, to the flush of youthful overconfidence, through the trials and tribulations of middle age, to the hero’s triumphant salvation, The Voyage of Life seems intrinsically linked to the Christian doctrine of death and resurrection. Cole’s intrepid voyager also may be read as a personification of America, itself at an adolescent stage of development. The artist may have been issuing a dire warning to those caught up in the feverish quest for Manifest Destiny: that unbridled westward expansion and industrialization would have tragic consequences for both man and nature.

The name Bjelajac is uncommon, so if it rings a bell for you, it may be because the professor is related to Bro. Michael Bjelajac, Past Master of Gate City Lodge No. 2 in Atlanta.