Odd Fellows Hall

History and architecture

Located on a prominent site on Grand Street, between Centre and Baxter Streets, the Odd Fellows Hall was designed by the architectural firm of Joseph Trench and John Butler Snook. Built in 1847-46, it is an early and particularly fine example of the Anglo-Italianate style of architecture that both Trench and Snook helped introduce to New York- Moreover, it is one of the few surviving institutional buildings of any style from the 1840s, an important period in the architectural history' of the city. John Butler Snook, the younger partner in. the firm, later became one of New York's most famous and prolific architects of the nineteenth century; the Odd Fellows Hall stands as one of his most striking and important buildings.

Trench and Snook's client, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, was one of the many mutual aid societies and fraternal organizations established in New York in the nineteenth century to contribute to the welfare of tine city's populace. The eventual move of the Odd Fellows from the Grand Street site by the early 1880s to one further uptown reflected the northward development that, characterized the growth of Manhattan from the middle of the nineteenth century onward.

The Odd Fellows and the Grand Street Building

The Independent Order of Odd Fellows, a secret society, was founded in Manchester, England, in 1812, although it. traced its origins back to the seventeenth century. "Odd Fellowship was organized in the United States in 1819 in Baltimore; that city was also the site, of the first Odd Fellows Hail in this country, dedicated in 1831.

The Odd Fellows was a fraternal organization that had as its purpose: "To Visit the Sick, Relieve the Distressed, to Bury the Dead, and to Educate the Orphan, " and in addition to be the "Guardian of the Widow, and Father of the Fatherless. "

Throughout the nineteenth century the Odd Fellows became progressively more popular; by the 1890s there were over 150 lodges in. New York City alone.

On April 9, 1844, the legislature of New York incorporated the "Odd Fellows Hall Association of the city of New-York" and defined its object as "... to provide suitable premises by the erection of a conveniently sized edifice, for the accommodation of library and reading-rooms, apartments for natural history, science, and the arts, school, lecture and meeting rooms, and to provide for the education of orphan children. However, as late as 1848, the Grand Lodge of the Odd Fellows was still meeting at National Hall on Canal Street.

The building on Grand Street, erected by Trench and Snook, was apparently the first such hall in New York City specifically built for the Odd Fellows and replaced National Hall as the home of the Grand Lodge. In torch 1847 payments to the architects began.