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Overview

This building served the Masonic Ark Lodge #126 from 1921 until it was sold in 2002. The Masons used it as an assembly space and as an income property, deriving rents from first-floor commercial spaces. Architect Lawrence McCauley designed the building, and several others in the near vicinty in Columbia City. Since 2003, it has housed a four-screen movie theatre.

Building History

An architect active in the Columbia City Neighborhood, John L. McCauley (1879-1957) designed the proper Neo-classical facade of the second Ark Lodge #126. The Ark Lodge #126 commissioned McCauley, a member of the Masonic Order, to erect their second meeting place in the neighborhood built between 1920-1921. Previously, the group had met from 1903-1921 at Fraternity Hall nearby. Like many fraternal organization meeting places, the building originally was mixed-use; rental storefronts often occupied first floor steet frontage for rental income. The Heater Glove factory, a small firm with a national reputation for making various types of leather gloves and helmets, occupied the first floor from about 1921 to just after World War II. As Mikala Woodward has noted in her essay "Ark Lodge Building: Home of Columbia City’s Fraternal Past," "Charles Lindbergh wore a Heater helmet on his trip across the Atlantic in 1927...now in the Smithsonian..... The company also made boxing gloves for Jack Dempsey, a personal friend of Freeman’s. [Freeman Heater owned the factory]." (SeeAccessed 07/08/2010.)

In 2003, Paul Doyle converted it into the Columbia City Theatre. The Neo-classical upstairs auditorium seated 204. David McCrae operated the four movie theatres in the building beginning in 2012.

Building Notes

The Columbia City Masonic Lodge had four notable Ionic pilasters stretched across the second story of its facade. A gable graced the center of the parapet with the Masonic compass and square ruler (L-shaped ruler) crest. In 2010, the Ark Lodge and its 4,563-acre property had a value of $1,600,000.

Alteration

An awning was added to the front entryway in 1949. Additionally, steel beams were added to first-floor spaces, possibly to strengthen the building following the Olympia Earthquake of 04/13/1949.

The Ark Lodge was altered in 2003 from a fraternal organization meeting hall to a 204-seat movie screening room. Subsequent remodeling created two other 100-seat theatres on the first level. In 2016, two theatres operated on floor one, and two on floor two.