1889 Masonic Lodge Hall

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I tell it. You're rolling through Waxahachie, Ellis County, and there is a building on this street that has been quietly watching this town grow up for well over a hundred years. Three stories of brick, standing straight and serious, and right at the top, a tin cornice dressed up with Masonic emblems.

That cornice is practically a billboard for what this place used to be. Back in 1889, this whole structure went up for Waxahachie Lodge No. 90, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons. Three floors, and every one of them had a job to do.

The first floor, rented out to retail stores, foot traffic and commerce, the everyday hum of a growing Texas town. The second floor, professional offices, the kind of place where serious men in serious coats conducted serious business. And up on the third floor, high above all that worldly hustle, the lodge hall itself.

Now that arrangement held for a good long while. The brothers of Lodge No. 90 gathered up on that third floor year after year, right up until 1926, when the lodge moved on. Three years later, in 1929, the building was sold to a man named D.D.

Eastham. Time kept moving, as it does, and the structure passed to his son Jack. Then in 1975, the Ellis County Historical Museum and Art Gallery, Incorporated, purchased it.

So that tin cornice with its Masonic emblems is still up there, still decorated, still keeping watch. Some buildings just refuse to be forgotten.

What the marker says

A tin cornice decorated with Masonic emblems tops this three-story brick building constructed in 1889 for Waxahachie Lodge No. 90, A.F.& A.M. The first floor was rented to retail stores, the second occupied by professional offices, and the third used as a lodge hall until 1926, when the lodge moved. Sold in 1929 to D.D. Eastham, the structure was later owned by his son, Jack. It was purchased in 1975 by the Ellis County Historical Museum and Art Gallery, Inc.