in 1818 the private Rockville and Washington Turnpike Co. began building a road to link Washington City to Rockville, Maryland. This road helped create a village. A toll gate on what today is Georgia Avenue between Quackenbos and Rittenhouse streets encouraged travelers to pause here. Lewis Burnett built a roadhouse, or restaurant, on this intersection's southwest corner. By the early 1860s the road- house became Moreland Tavern, offering sleep- ing accommodations. During the Civil War, the tavern housed the officers who would lead the defense of nearby Fort Stevens during the Confederate attack. The tavern made way for the wood-frame home of Stansbury Masonic Lodge No. 24. Besides meeting and secret ceremonial spaces, the hall housed the Brightwood Hotel. The Freemasons, an ancient fraternal organization with roots in the building trades, continue to do good works and create fellowship. Washington’s Freemasons have served in all professions, from bricklayer to president. In 1919 Stansbury member Frank Russell White designed a grand new limestone temple. Its main meeting room could hold 200 and had a mezzanine and balcony with a pipe organ. The first floor initially housed a post office, then a Sanitary (later Safeway) Grocery and eventually a Pontiac car dealership. The Freemasons rented their meeting spaces to Greek Sunday schools, high school fraternities, synagogues, and others. After Stansbury Lodge moved to Takoma in 1987, the building was sold. In the 1990s, it gained brief notoriety as a nightclub, and in 2007 reopened as the Lofts at Brightwood. Build It and They Will Come missouri and georgia avenues nw
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