Masonic Widows and Orphans Home | |
The Olmstead | |
Location | Louisville, Kentucky |
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Coordinates | 38°15′16″N85°40′3″W / 38.25444°N 85.66750°W |
Built | 1922 |
Architect | Joseph and Joseph; Olmsted Brothers |
Architectural style | Colonial Revival, Classical Revival |
NRHP reference No. | 02000916 [1] |
Added to NRHP | September 6, 2002 |
The Masonic Widows and Orphans Home, located in Louisville near St. Matthews, Kentucky, is a historic building on the National Register of Historic Places. It was built by the Grand Lodge of Kentucky to support the widows and orphans of Master Masons, but now is open to all senior citizens.
The Masonic Widows' and Orphans' Home was formed in 1867 due to a discussion on November 23, 1866, pondering what to do with the number of widows and orphans of Masons caused by the American Civil War; the 1867 founding makes Kentucky's Masonic Widows and Orphans Home the oldest Masonic home in North America. It started when a group of Louisville Freemasons on November 23, 1866, gathered with an intention of creating such a home. The Kentucky General Assembly chartered the organization in January 1867. The initial starting funds for starting the home was $30,000, with additional funds totaling $20,000 and $12,000 separately. The cornerstone of the original home, located north of Avery Street between First and Second Street in what was previously a cornfield, was laid in 1869, with the first resident admitted on April 7, 1871. The building was completed in 1873. A tornado on June 2, 1875, damaged the roof and center walls of the original building, but no one was injured. [2] [3] [4] [5]
World War I and the Spanish influenza outbreak during and immediately after the war caused overcrowding. Thus, the decision was made to construct a larger orphan's home than the original in Louisville, to the present-day location in Louisville/St. Matthews on Frankfort Avenue, at the cost of $9,400,000. Construction began in 1925 on the 176-acre (0.71 km2) location, and the residents moved to it on August 15, 1927. Louisville daily newspaper The Courier-Journal called it "Little City Beautiful". The largest concentration of orphans at the home was 632 in 1930. The last orphan left in 1989, resulting in the home being solely for senior care. [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
Most of the buildings established at the campus are still in existence. The Grand Lodge of Kentucky has its offices at the location. Until the orphans were eventually taught in public schools, originally their education was on the campus, with a cannery, farm operation, print shop, sewing room, and shoe shop there to teach the orphans a trade to support themselves in their adulthood. The St. Johns Day League Infirmary took care of sick residents. Once Kentucky state laws forbid using crops grown on the farm to feed the residents, the farm operations were sold off in 1988. The Home now accepts residents who are not related to Masons. [8] In 2009 construction began on the property for the Kosair Charities Pediatric Day Care Center. The center opened in 2010 as Sproutlings Pediatric Day Care & Preschool. [9]
There was another Masonic orphanage in Louisville area, established across the Ohio River in Port Fulton, Indiana (now part of Jeffersonville), on the grounds of the former Jefferson General Hospital. It also ran out of orphans around the year 1990, and the grounds were used to construct a newer Masonic temple for the local lodges and Order of the Eastern Star chapters.
Barbourmeade is a home rule-class city in Jefferson County, Kentucky, United States. It was formally incorporated by the state assembly in 1962. The population was 1,218 at the 2010 census.
The Kentucky State Capitol is located in Frankfort and is the house of the three branches of the state government of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Kentucky Railway Museum, now located in New Haven, Kentucky, United States, is a non-profit railroad museum dedicated to educating the public regarding the history and heritage of Kentucky's railroads and the people who built them. Originally created in 1954 in Louisville, Kentucky, the museum is at its third location, in extreme southern Nelson County. It is one of the oldest railroad stations in the United States.
The Most Worshipful Grand Lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, commonly referred to as the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts and abbreviated GLMA, is the main governing body of Freemasonry within Massachusetts, and maintains Lodges in other jurisdictions overseas, namely Panama, Chile, the People's Republic of China, and Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba.
The Confederate Monument in Louisville is a 70-foot-tall monument formerly adjacent to and surrounded by the University of Louisville Belknap Campus in Louisville, Kentucky, United States. Relocation of the monument to Brandenburg, Kentucky, along the town's riverfront began November 2016, and was completed in mid-December. The granite and bronze structure was erected in 1895 by the Muldoon Monument Company with funds raised by the Kentucky Woman's Confederate Monument Association. The monument commemorates the sacrifice of Confederate veterans who died in the American Civil War.
Thomas Henry Hines was a Confederate cavalryman who was known for his spying activities during the last two years of the American Civil War. A native of Butler County, Kentucky, he initially worked as a grammar instructor, mainly at the Masonic University of La Grange, Kentucky. During the first year of the war, he served as a field officer, initiating several raids. He was an important assistant to John Hunt Morgan, doing a preparatory raid in advance of Morgan's Raid through the states of Indiana and Ohio, and after being captured with Morgan, organized their escape from the Ohio Penitentiary. He was later involved in espionage and tried to stir up insurrections against the Federal government in selected Northern locales.
The table below includes sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in Jefferson County, Kentucky except those in the following neighborhoods/districts of Louisville: Anchorage, Downtown, The Highlands, Old Louisville, Portland and the West End. Links to tables of listings in these other areas are provided below.
Mall St. Matthews, formerly known as The Mall, is a shopping mall located near Louisville, Kentucky at 5000 Shelbyville Road in the eastern suburb of St. Matthews.
Frank Leslie Chelf was a United States representative from Kentucky. He was born on a farm near Elizabethtown, Kentucky. He graduated from Masonic Home High School and lived at the Masonic Widows and Orphans Home in Louisville, KY. He attended the public schools as well as Centre College at Danville, Kentucky and St. Mary's College. He graduated from Cumberland School of Law at Cumberland University, Lebanon, Tennessee in 1931 and was admitted to the bar in 1931 and commenced practice in Lebanon, Kentucky. He served as an attorney of Marion County, Kentucky 1933–1944.
Rob Morris was a prominent American poet and Freemason. He also created the first ritual for what was to become the Order of the Eastern Star.
The Masonic Home and School of Texas was a home for widows and orphans in what is now Fort Worth, Texas from 1889 to 2005. The first superintendent was Dr. Frank Rainey of Austin, Texas. Starting in 1913, it had its own school system, the Masonic Home Independent School District. Orphan Blake R. Van Leer was the only boy in 1909, went on to become president of Georgia Tech and civil rights advocate.
The Grand Lodge of Kentucky is one of two state organizations that supervise Masonic lodges in the state of Kentucky. It was established in 1800.
The Grand Lodge of Free & Accepted Masons of Indiana is one of two statewide organizations that oversee Masonic lodges in the state of Indiana. It was established on January 13, 1818. The Grand Lodge of Indiana's offices and archives are located in the Indianapolis Masonic Temple. The historically black Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Indiana F&AM is the second regular Masonic grand lodge in the state, and it was originally established in 1856 as the Independent Union Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of the State of Indiana. The two grand lodges agreed to mutual recognition in May 1998, and they jointly share sovereignty over the Masonic fraternity in Indiana.
The Masonic University was an educational facility operated by the Grand Lodge of Kentucky in La Grange, Kentucky, located twenty miles northeast of Louisville, in the mid-nineteenth century. Among its faculty was Kentucky Chief Jurist and Confederate spy Thomas Hines, and Robert Morris, the poet laureate of Freemasonry.
The Jeffersonian was a weekly newspaper published on Thursdays, in Jeffersontown, Jefferson County, Kentucky. The Jeffersonian was first published on June 13, 1907, and was last published in 1965.
The Iowa Soldiers' Orphans' Home, also known at the Annie Wittenmyer Home or the Annie Wittenmyer Center, located in Davenport, Iowa, United States is a former orphanage for children. It is listed on the Davenport Register of Historic Properties and as a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places. The home was originally used for orphans from the American Civil War. Starting in 1876, children from broken homes, as well as orphans from all of Iowa's 99 counties, were taken in at the home.
The Home for Aged Masons, formerly known as the Masonic Widows' and Orphans' Home and the Middle Tennessee Tuberculosis Hospital, is a historic building in Nashville, Tennessee, USA.
John Andrewartha was an English architect and civil engineer.
Alone is a ghost town in Metcalfe County, Kentucky once located along KY 1243. It is now an unincorporated townsite in Metcalfe County, Kentucky.