Edward Bowen cannot get over the hardwood floors.
He watches almost daily as workers remove decades old linoleum and tile from the floors of the Prince Hall Masonic Lodge on Auburn Avenue.
“We finally got all of the funding in place, so we are doing some light demo and abatement to remove the asbestos and the tiles,” Bowen said. “And we found these gorgeous hardwood floors.”
Credit: Daniel Varnado
Credit: Daniel Varnado
The old building, built by Black dollars and once the organizational headquarters of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., is in the final stages of a major $10 million renovation.
Once a cornerstone of Atlanta’s cultural and civil rights history, Bowen said the nearly 90-year-old building will be fully restored to its original 1930s grandeur, while becoming a 16,000-square-foot modern, multiuse office building.
When it opens early next year, the lodge will feature a museum-like treatment of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference offices, as well as office space on the upper floors for businesses and the Prince Hall Masons.
For Bowen, a member of the lodge and the attorney for the Prince Hall Masons, it has been a labor of love and reclamation.
Credit: Daniel Varnado
Credit: Daniel Varnado
“It was long process to raise the funds, but I am reminded of what those gentlemen did in the 30s when they were raising money to build the lodge,” Bowen said. “When I think of those men raising money during the Depression and World War II, I was committed to finish.”
Closed since the pandemic, lodge members have raised more than $10 million since 2018 to renovate the building.
Credit: Matlock Public Relations
Credit: Matlock Public Relations
To help the process along, the Trust for Public Land secured a $2 million donation from the Lettie Pate Evans Foundation as part of a planned $4.5 million campaign to complete the funding for the restoration, permanently protect the lodge and ultimately incorporate it into the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park.
Grants also came in from the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, the Georgia Pacific Foundation, Invest Atlanta and the National Park Service. The renovations will include structural improvements, aesthetic revitalization and the incorporation of modern amenities.
Eventually, the Trust for Public Land will purchase the building from the lodge and plans to donate it to the National Park Service.
Credit: Georgia State University Special Collections
Credit: Georgia State University Special Collections
In 1937, two years before the Nazis invaded Poland and started World War II, the Masons in Atlanta, using critical resources, completed the construction of the three-story building.
John Wesley Dobbs, the grandfather of Atlanta’s first Black mayor, Maynard Jackson, oversaw the construction and initial fundraising as the grand master of the Prince Hall Masons. According to the Prince Hall Masons, the construction cost between $35,000-$40,000, equivalent to about $882,500 today.
Founded during the Revolutionary War by freed African slaves in the colonies, the Prince Hall Masons is the largest and oldest Black fraternal organization in the nation.
Credit: SPECIAL TO AJC
Credit: SPECIAL TO AJC
“The Masons have always served as a driver of change and progress in the Black community, and we will continue to drive the advancement of our people,” said Prince Hall’s current Grand Master Primus James.
Over the years, the 16,000-square-foot building housed the Masons, a Madam C.J. Walker Beauty Shoppe and WERD, the nation’s first Black-owned and directed radio station.
But its most famous tenant came in 1957, when King brought the SCLC there, establishing an organizational presence in the heart of Atlanta on one of the country’s most important and recognizable Black streets — Auburn Avenue.
The SCLC maintained an office in the building until 2007, when the group built its own building down the block on Auburn Avenue.
Credit: Bettmann Archive Getty Images
Credit: Bettmann Archive Getty Images
Because the building was constantly in use until it closed during the pandemic, it has been able to keep some of its original character, largely because of regular maintenance.
But the building had fallen into enough of a state of disrepair that the Atlanta History Center identified it as one of the most historically significant but unprotected buildings in metro Atlanta.
Credit: Ben Gray
Credit: Ben Gray
The renovation project will restore the SCLC offices to their historic character, with National Park Service exhibits and educational signage. As part of the restoration and conservation of the lodge, the Atlanta History Center partnered with the Masons to catalog the papers and other artifacts that were located there.
The National Park Service is also collecting oral histories from people who played important roles with the SCLC headquarters and WERD Radio.
“This restoration celebrates not just a building, but the countless stories and contributions of the Prince Hall Masons to our community,” Bowen said. “It will represent what was achieved in the 1930s to build it and it will be seen as a beacon for what can be done.”
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