At 500 Temple Street in Detroit’s Cass Corridor, a Neo-Gothic mass of stone holds more than 1,000 rooms: theaters, ballrooms, a chapel, lodge rooms, a barber shop, bowling lanes, and a drill hall. The Detroit Masonic Temple, dedicated on Thanksgiving Day in 1926, is the largest operating Masonic temple in the world. Most visitors see only the concert halls. The rest of the maze belongs to the Masons, and, some say, to a ghost.
The story goes that architect George D. Mason went bankrupt in the Great Depression, was abandoned by his wife, and leapt from the roof of the temple he had designed, and that his spirit now shuts windows, leaves the roof latch open, and makes things vanish. Every part of it is false. Mason never went bankrupt and never jumped. He died in 1948, of natural causes, at 91, in his home on Grand Boulevard. Yet the legend endures, fed by the secrecy of Freemasonry, unfinished sections, so-called secret passageways, and brooding Gothic halls. Visitors and staff still describe slamming doors, cold spots, and a shift in the air between rooms. The temple’s chief docent believes the building has a living energy, and that what it means is a matter of individual interpretation.
To go beyond the concert halls, you must book one of the temple’s guided historical or ghost tours. Walk its corridors. Remember the man who built it, and the fall that never happened.
Story Source: www.audacy.com
Address: 500 Temple Street, Detroit, MI 48201
Accessibility Rating: Guided Tours Only — Access permitted only as part of an organized tour. Independent exploration not allowed.
Google Map
What Others Have Experienced
Over several visits during Halloween events, a travel blogger kept sensing someone just over her shoulder in the theatre, whether the hall was packed or empty. She also ran into cold spots, heard muffled crowd-like noise near an empty gymnasium, and was hit by an overpowering foul smell confined to a single third-floor room.
— from Aoibhneas Travels
Touring the temple, a visitor from New Zealand was left in awe of the building’s intricate design and detail at every turn. They urged others to book well ahead and called seeing it in person an essential part of any Detroit trip.
— from TripAdvisor
