The Capitol and Washington Monument among noted
buildings marked by group.
Associated Press / May 22, 2005
By Carl Hartman
WASHINGTON -- Some of the most famous buildings in
Washington, including the White House, are deeply
marked by Freemasonry, the brotherhood that goes
back to the cathedral builders of the Middle Ages, says
a new exhibit.
The show is called "The Initiated Eye: Secrets, Symbols,
Freemasonry and the Architecture of Washington, D.C."
It opened to the public Wednesday.
Peter Waddell, 49, a history painter born in New
Zealand, contributed 21 pictures to the show. Now an
American citizen, he puts emphasis on George
Washington, shown as he dons his ritual Masonic apron
on the way to lay the cornerstone of the Capitol in 1792.
Washington and 14 of his successors have been
Freemasons, down through Lyndon Johnson.
Among the artifacts on view is a narrow white coffin
strap, painted with Masonic symbols, used to lower
Washington's body into the tomb at Mount Vernon.
Today's Freemasons owe their origin to associations of
workmen who built cathedrals in Britain 700 years ago,
though some believe in a connection with the mines
where King Solomon took material for his temple more
than 2,000 years before that. Over the centuries the
nature of Freemasonry changed. British lodges began
to accept members who were not stonemasons. By the
1700s many lodges were called "speculative" -- that is,
they dealt in ideas rather than stone.
On July 4, 1848, President James K. Polk, a Mason,
presided over the laying of the cornerstone of the
Washington Monument. Using the same Masonic trowel
that Washington had used at the Capitol, Benjamin
Brown French as Grand Master of Masons in
Washington and clerk of the House of Representatives
presented the symbolic Masonic tools and defined the
meaning of the symbols to Freemason Robert Mills, the
architect.
"The square, level and plumb are the working tools you
are to use in the erection of this monument," he said.
"You, as a Freemason, know to what they morally elude:
the plumb(line) admonishes to walk upright in our
several stations before God and man, squaring our
actions by the square of virtue, and remembering that
we are traveling on the level of time."
Despite definitions, Freemasonry has met serious
antipathy, embodied in a hostile edict from the Vatican
in 1738. In the early 1800s, there was an anti-Masonic
Party in the United States, which won seven electoral
votes and elected a governor in Vermont.
The exhibit is housed in a historic building, The
Octagon, one of the oldest houses in Washington,
where the treaty was signed ending the War of 1812.
The exhibit and a series of lectures have been
organized by the American Architectural Foundation
and the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of
the District of Columbia. The show will be on view
through Dec. 31.
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