Avondale Lodge No. 476
Avondale Lodge No. 476 was a Masonic lodge chartered by the Grand Lodge of Alabama (Free & Accepted Masons of Alabama) in Avondale in 1889. The lodge is now inactive, and its building was sold to the Beloved Community Church in 2000.
In 1908 the lodge commissioned a design for a new lodge building from architect David O. Whilldin. The two-story, brown brick building, completed in 1909, cost $6,000 to construct. It was designed to be shared with a ground floor retail tenant. Two prominent semi-circular limestone arched doorways on the front facade flanked a large show window. The right-hand archway, for the ground floor, led to a door recess that could also be entered from the 2nd Avenue side. The left-hand arch, with a carved masonic compass, accessed a stairway to the meeting room above.
The lodge's meeting room also featured large glazed openings, tied together at the top with a soldier course of brick set in relief. The Lodge's designation was set into a framed panel under a shallow false gable in the roof pediment. A cornerstone adjacent to the lodge door indicates the stamp of Grand Master H. S. D. Mallory.
References
- Shelby, Thomas Mark (2009) D. O. Whilldin: Alabama Architect. Birmingham: Birmingham Historical Society