Built St. Louis: Recalled to Life
The Moolah Temple

This festive, exotically decorated building is located on Lindell in Midtown, a few blocks west of the Continental. Thanks to a friendly reader of this site, I now have some general information on it.

The Moolah Temple was home to the Shriners, a Masonic organization, until the mid-1980s, when the changing residency of the Shriners' membership prompted them to move west. Built in the 1920s, the structure was never actually completed. Rooms within were rented out to various other Masonic groups and chapters, but as the middle class fled to the suburbs, they took their rental income with them. With heating and restoration costs looming, the building was sold around 1986 or '87.

Craig Cervantes Realtors offered the building for sale; a September 13, 2000 article from the Post-Dispatch reported that long-time owner TRiSTAR Business Communities planned to renovate the building to the tune of $11 million, to the designs of Cleveland-based GSI-Architects Inc. Office space would be installed in the unique interior spaces, with state historic tax credits requiring that they remain intact. An 1880s house located next to the temple was slated for demolition. The renovation never got underway, however; the building sat idle for several more years.


Postcard scan courtesy of Larry Furman.

Reader Laura Schafsnitz provided some great commentary on the building's interior:

"The inside of this place is HUGE!! I remember A LOT of marble.....a winding marble staircase, marble benches, marble pillars in the front hallway. I can't remember if it was the ceiling or the wall that had a huge mural painted on it. Ceilings were vaulted throughout. There was a working elevator system, as I said before, office space and meeting rooms. The one meeting room that was in use was gorgeous. Plush red velvet carpet down the middle with an altar in the middle. There was raised seating a few rows deep on either side of the carpet. At the front of the room was a raised area where officers of the organization sat with a large carved wooden podium and three very ornately carved chairs. This was backdropped and framed by white Grecian-style pillars. At the back of the room was a small staircase that ran up to a choir loft which could have seated about 20 people. This outside of the loft was richly carved dark wood.....mahogany, perhaps? There were two or three massive windows, each curtained in red velvet and surrounded by Grecian style moldings. Where the walls and the ceiling met were molded as well and I think etched with gold leaf..."

"Anyway, during the temple's heyday before the Great Depression, there were 10 or 12 more rooms decked out in much the same style and in use almost every night of the week. There was also a large auditorium in the building, but I don't remember much about it.....I do remember the one at the Scottish Rite though. It was huge and very grand with a stage and seating that seemed to reach to high heavens. It reminded me a lot of the interior of the Fox Theater. Anyway, I think the auditorium in the Shrine Temple was very similar to the at the Scottish Rite. The basement of the temple was used as a dining and banquet facility. It wasn't too lavish, pretty much a typical cold concrete basement, but it did have full kitchen and catering facilities and a full bar."

Around 2004, a $42 million renovation finally got underway, under the stewardship of developers Amy and Amrit Gill. In January 2005, the former Masonic temple re-opened with 40 apartments, a single-screen movie theater (boasting the largest screen in the area and leather couches among the seating), and a bowling alley and grille in the basement. A new garage stands behind the building, serving the Moolah Temple as well as SLU.


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