Scottish Rite Temple
- Architect
- John Russell Pope
- Year
- 1915
- Style
- Neoclassical
- City
- Washington, DC
- Collection
- the city beautiful
The House of the Temple, headquarters of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry's Southern Jurisdiction, was designed by John Russell Pope and modeled after the ancient Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Completed in 1915 at 1733 16th Street NW in Dupont Circle, about a mile north of the White House, it serves the Supreme Council whose founding, marked by a 1911 ceremony held 110 years after the fact, dates to 1801.
the building
Modeled on a Wonder of the World. Pope based the design on the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the tomb of Mausolus and one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, giving a 20th-century Masonic headquarters the form of an ancient burial monument.
The Temple library. The building's library is the first and oldest public library in Washington, D.C., and holds one of the world's largest collections of materials related to the Scottish poet and Freemason Robert Burns outside of Scotland.
the style
Built in Neoclassicism, the Temple's design is modeled directly on the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus rather than a generic Greek or Roman temple form, an unusual and specific source for a Masonic headquarters.
More on Neoclassicalsignificance
The House of the Temple is an individual DC Historic Landmark and a National Register of Historic Places contributing property.
nearby
- Grimke, Charlotte Forten House
- The Cairo
- Saint Luke's Episcopal Church
- Twelfth Street YMCA Building
- Page, Thomas Nelson, House
- Carnegie Institution of Washington, Administration Building