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the rite stuff inside the Freemasons’ Scottish Rite Center by Craig Smit h
CARRIE MCCARTHY
SOMETIMES THE BEST-KEPT secrets are right out in plain sight—because unlike Poe’s purloined letter, they are immense as well as unnoticed. Take one of Santa Fe’s most imposing edifices. Thousands of people pass by its sunrise-sunset hues every day and never really take heed of it. But once you’ve beheld its interior, you’ll never see the building casually again. The Scottish Rite Center, at the northwest corner of Paseo de Peralta and Washington, was cornerstoned in 1911 and dedicated as a Masonic Cathedral on November 17, 1912 (the year New Mexico became a state). Designed in a style that imitates and interprets the Alhambra in Granada, Spain, its red-tile roof and pink stucco walls have benignly dominated local consciousness for a century. Affectionately known as “the Pepto-Bismol building” or “the pink Moorish palace” (or the Santa Fe Lodge of Perfection) among other names, this 43,000-square-foot complex has been the meeting place for decades of Southwestern Scottish Rite Masons. Currently, two Masonic-degree-conferring Reunions and two other special meetings take place there each year. At other times, the center is a welcoming community venue that straddles past and present, offering tours and use of the space. From performances to scientific lectures, fund-raising dinners to memorial services, the center is used by a rainbow of local groups. Santa Fe keyboardist Bert Dalton, himself a Mason, gave a fascinating concert there of works by another Mason, Duke Ellington. The local chapter of the American Guild of Organists inspected the center’s historic 1918 Murray Harris pipe organ during a recent “organ crawl,” and Polish politician Lech Walesa once spoke there. The center has been used in films, too, including the recently completed Passion Play, starring Mickey Rourke, Megan Fox, and Kelly Lynch. Plans for the building began well before New Mexico achieved statehood. In 1909, The Daily New Mexican noted that local architect Isaac H. Rapp had been awarded the contract for a “Scottish Rite Cathedral” on the northern edge of town. (Historic photographs, before and during construction and at the dedication, show how the center dominated the city then; only the Federal Courthouse kept it company at the time.) Rapp, however, was later refused the commission—perhaps because his initial design seemed overly neoclassic to the review committee. Instead, the gig went to the Los Angeles firm of Hunt and Burns. Their conception mixed California mission style with a mix of New Mexico and Moorish architecture; the result: a massiveness unspoiled by excess exterior ornamentation but with a wealth of detail and fine interior work. The center was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.
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santafean.com
june/july 2011