The Elks Lodge

Built in 1923, our five-story building was once a clubhouse for Elks Lodge No. 878, the local chapter of the the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.  It was the largest Elks Lodge on the East Coast with 60 rooms- including “a swimming pool, a gym, an Aztec-themed theater, 28 guest rooms, a banquet hall, billiards, a ladies’ lounge, eight bowling alleys and three bars (one that is 50 feet long!), built in the teeth of Prohibition.   Large stained-glass panels on each wall of the 700-seat theater, proclaimed the order’s four cardinal tenets: Charity, Justice, Brotherly Love and Fidelity.”¹  The Ballinger Company, one of the largest commercial and industrial design firms in the country in the 1900s, designed the granite, limestone and brick structure dominated by a now-verdigris-covered elk at the front entrance.  Built in the neoclassical style, the former Elks Lodge was one of the borough’s premier social hubs, “a place so vibrant that if you didn’t get tickets two months in advance, you were locked out of the annual six-day Elks bazaar, the borough’s premier social extravaganza.”²  For a couple of decades, Extreme Championship Wrestling (the old ECW, now folded into Vince McMahon’s WWE) bouts were held here featuring some of the legends of “sports entertainment” such as the Sandman and Mick Foley.³ The Elks Lodge became an official New York City Landmark in 2004.

1. INSIDE QUEENS; Glory of Elkdom Fading for Lodge 878, NYTimes. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/27/nyregion/inside-queens-glory-of-elkdom-fading-for-lodge-878.html
2. INSIDE QUEENS; Glory of Elkdom Fading for Lodge 878, NYTimes. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/27/nyregion/inside-queens-glory-of-elkdom-fading-for-lodge-878.html
3. http://forgotten-ny.com/2011/04/forgottentour-39-newtown-elmhurst-queens/