Benevolent and Paternal Order of Elks (B.P.O.E.) Lodge #2
Philadelphia PA
2012

https://hiddencityphila.org/2012/04/survivor/

If Philadelphia buildings were contestants in a season of Survivor, this building would make it to the final Tribal Council. Built to compliment one of the city’s finest neighborhoods, it ended up spending most of its life surrounded by blight. While literally everything around it has met the wrecking ball, this beast has managed to outwit, outplay, and outlast all of its competition.

The Benevolent and Paternal Order of Elks began their Philadelphia Lodge on February 19, 1871, only a week after the NYC Lodge officially started (both lodges had been around for three years under various other club names). The Philadelphia lodge was the second ever Elks Lodge. It was named B.P.O.E. Lodge B, because they never envisioned having more than 26 lodges. In 1881, it was renamed B.P.O.E. Lodge #2.

The first nine members of the Philadelphia Elks Lodge were members from the New York Lodge #1. Like all the first Elks, they were actors and performers that formed the club in order to get drunk outside normal tavern hours. These men set up a small Clubhouse/Wastoid Den on the second floor of a long lost building at 10th and Chestnut Streets, above a restaurant called Finelli’s. Better than the house near 10th and Sansom they had used under previous club names, it would be the home to the Philadelphia Elks for 13 years. After that, the Philadelphia B.P.O.E. moved often: first to 11th and Chestnut then to another building on the same corner four years later then, in November, 1889, to new digs at 232 North 9th Street.

Over the next decade, membership in fraternal organizations made a resurgence after a long slump. No longer just a club for drunk and transient minstrels and vaudevillians, the now respectable Philadelphia lodge’s membership ballooned from 165 to 345, making their 9th Street rowhouse-sized building way too cramped. The Elks moved over to a temporary quarters at 1609 Arch Street while membership continued to grow. It became clear that a new and MUCH larger building would be needed. In 1903, the Elks held a design competition for a grand new building that would be constructed at 1320 Arch Street, the Southwest corner of Arch and Juniper Streets. The budget was $200,000, $11.5 million in today’s dollars.

In the decades before the move, the area just northeast of the yet-to-be-built City Hall was one of the most opulent in the city. Around the turn of the 20th century, the residential neighborhood became home of the city’s great gentleman’s clubs and secret societies. The Freemasons, the Oddfellows, the Scottish Ritists, and the St. Georgians all made a presence there. The Elks, coming to Arch and Juniper, would be one of the last to arrive. All of the best architecture firms from the period submitted ideas for what would be one of the finest Elk mega-lodges in America. The winner of the competition was the firm of Caldwell and Simon.

The Elks spared no expense in the creation of the B.P.O.E. French Renaissance Super-Fortress. It boasted walls of Sayer and Fisher brick, Indiana limestone facade details with terra cotta trimmings, one of the finest dining rooms in the city, and a roof garden (and you thought roofdecks were a new thing!). Construction began in 1904 and the building was officially dedicated April 17th, 1906. The project came in way under budget at $60,000.

The dedication was such a huge raging party that it practically took over the city. Hundreds of Elks from far and wide came to see the new building. This was nothing compared to the party a year later, when the new Philadelphia Lodge building became the centerpiece of the Elks’ national convention in 1907. The Elks became more popular than ever and membership skyrocketed. The new lodge was already too small for the Elks’ needs by 1922, only 14 years after it opened. In 1925, Lodge #2 moved over to their MUCH larger new digs at North Broad and Wood Streets, but kept ownership of the Juniper and Arch building.