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Backgrounder
Parks Canada’s National Historic Sites Cost-Sharing Program
Project Recipient: Masonic Foundation of Québec
National Historic Site: Masonic Memorial Temple National Historic Site
Total Project Cost: minimum of $200,000
Parks Canada’s Contribution: up to $100,000
Project Description:
The Masonic Foundation of Québec’s conservation project will address deteriorated masonry on the Saint-Marc Street facade of the Masonic Memorial Temple. The work will secure the building’s masonry envelope from further deterioration and improve its weather tightness. This investment will ensure that the commemorative integrity of this important national historic site is maintained for present and future generations and will support its continued use so that it remains an integral part of the community.
Masonic Memorial Temple National Historic Site
The Masonic Memorial Temple National Historic Site is a monumental, elegant neoclassical stone building built between 1929 and 1930. Designed in the Beaux-Arts tradition, it resembles a Greek temple and occupies a corner lot in Montréal’s urban core. The imposing main facade features a rusticated limestone base with four openings and a central entrance flanked by two freestanding columns supporting terrestrial and celestial spheres. The main double-door is made of bronze. The decorative belt course that defines the upper part of the base features ornamental carving and words in relief. The property slopes with the elevation of downtown Montréal. Official recognition refers to the building on its legal property.
The Masonic Memorial Temple was designated a national historic site of Canada in 2001 because:
- it stands as an exceptionally refined example of a late Beaux-Arts Classical building;
- it is an allegorical representation of Freemasonry’s Enlightenment ideas, which used monumental classical architecture to symbolize its moral beliefs.
Built to honour the Freemasons who had served and fallen in the First World War, today it is the meeting place and headquarters of the Grand Lodge of Québec. Designed by prominent Montréal architect John Smith Archibald in 1929-1930, the Masonic Memorial Temple uses a form of classicism favoured by the Beaux-Arts school of design during the first decades of the 20th century. With its prominent portico, temple-like entrance and windowless expanses, the building evokes a traditional Greek temple. The complex interior layout uses Beaux-Arts principles of rational symmetrical planning to suggest the Biblical temple of Solomon.
Beaux-Arts classicism appropriately expressed the morality of the Freemasons, a fraternal organization who looked to the past for their identity and believed in the superiority of antiquity and of classical architecture. Masonic rituals emphasized moral uprightness through the language of science and mathematics, as well as through the mechanics of building. The moral beliefs of Freemasonry are symbolized in the design and detailing of the temple, expressed in classical language.
Cost-Sharing Program
The National Historic Sites Cost-Sharing Program is a contribution program whereby up to 50% of eligible costs incurred in the conservation of a national historic site can be reimbursed. This year, the Program aimed to assist non-federal owners of national historic sites that demonstrated a real and immediate threat to the commemorative integrity of their national historic site and for which an intervention was required in the short term to maintain the physical integrity of the threatened cultural resource(s). A national historic site possesses commemorative integrity when it is healthy and whole, and when the site’s heritage values are protected, communicated and respected. The Program supports Parks Canada’s mandate of protecting and presenting places of national historic significance, and fostering the public’s understanding, appreciation and enjoyment of these places in ways that ensure their commemorative integrity for present and future generations.
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National Historic Site: Masonic Memorial Temple National Historic Site
Total Project Cost: minimum of $200,000
Parks Canada’s Contribution: up to $100,000
Project Description:
The Masonic Foundation of Québec’s conservation project will address deteriorated masonry on the Saint-Marc Street facade of the Masonic Memorial Temple. The work will secure the building’s masonry envelope from further deterioration and improve its weather tightness. This investment will ensure that the commemorative integrity of this important national historic site is maintained for present and future generations and will support its continued use so that it remains an integral part of the community.
Masonic Memorial Temple National Historic Site
The Masonic Memorial Temple National Historic Site is a monumental, elegant neoclassical stone building built between 1929 and 1930. Designed in the Beaux-Arts tradition, it resembles a Greek temple and occupies a corner lot in Montréal’s urban core. The imposing main facade features a rusticated limestone base with four openings and a central entrance flanked by two freestanding columns supporting terrestrial and celestial spheres. The main double-door is made of bronze. The decorative belt course that defines the upper part of the base features ornamental carving and words in relief. The property slopes with the elevation of downtown Montréal. Official recognition refers to the building on its legal property.
The Masonic Memorial Temple was designated a national historic site of Canada in 2001 because:
- it stands as an exceptionally refined example of a late Beaux-Arts Classical building;
- it is an allegorical representation of Freemasonry’s Enlightenment ideas, which used monumental classical architecture to symbolize its moral beliefs.
Built to honour the Freemasons who had served and fallen in the First World War, today it is the meeting place and headquarters of the Grand Lodge of Québec. Designed by prominent Montréal architect John Smith Archibald in 1929-1930, the Masonic Memorial Temple uses a form of classicism favoured by the Beaux-Arts school of design during the first decades of the 20th century. With its prominent portico, temple-like entrance and windowless expanses, the building evokes a traditional Greek temple. The complex interior layout uses Beaux-Arts principles of rational symmetrical planning to suggest the Biblical temple of Solomon.
Beaux-Arts classicism appropriately expressed the morality of the Freemasons, a fraternal organization who looked to the past for their identity and believed in the superiority of antiquity and of classical architecture. Masonic rituals emphasized moral uprightness through the language of science and mathematics, as well as through the mechanics of building. The moral beliefs of Freemasonry are symbolized in the design and detailing of the temple, expressed in classical language.
Cost-Sharing Program
The National Historic Sites Cost-Sharing Program is a contribution program whereby up to 50% of eligible costs incurred in the conservation of a national historic site can be reimbursed. This year, the Program aimed to assist non-federal owners of national historic sites that demonstrated a real and immediate threat to the commemorative integrity of their national historic site and for which an intervention was required in the short term to maintain the physical integrity of the threatened cultural resource(s). A national historic site possesses commemorative integrity when it is healthy and whole, and when the site’s heritage values are protected, communicated and respected. The Program supports Parks Canada’s mandate of protecting and presenting places of national historic significance, and fostering the public’s understanding, appreciation and enjoyment of these places in ways that ensure their commemorative integrity for present and future generations.
News Release associated with this Backgrounder.
