Elmhurst Site Nominated To Listing
The Queensboro Elks Lodge in Elmhurst is among 22 historic places across New York State nominated to the State and National Registers of Historic Places, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced last Friday, Sept. 19.
Once the largest Elks Lodge on the Eastern Seaboard, the three-story stone structure and an adjoining annex located at 82- 10/82-20 Queens Blvd. serves as a “distinctive architectural example of a 20th century fraternal organization building designed in the Italian Renaissance Revival style,” according to the governor’s announcement.
Home to the Queensboro Elks Lodge 878, the fraternal group once had thousands of members, but its ranks dwindled significantly in the latter part of the 20th century. The New Life Fellowship Church purchased the main building in 2001, while the lodge continues to own and operate the annex.
Addition to the historic registers not only recognizes the building’s historical significance, it was noted, but also opens the door for the owners to receive matching grants and tax credits toward preserving the lodge for years to come.
More than 90,000 buildings, structures and points of interest across the Empire State are listed on the registers.
Constructed in 1923 at a cost of $750,000-equal to about $10.4 million today-the Queensboro Elks Lodge 878 was built by the Ballinger Company and designed by architect Sidney L. Strauss. One of its most prominent features is a bronze elk statue standing atop a granite base near the lodge’s main entrance.
Built to last, the lodge was made of materials including granite, limestone and brick and features decorative cornices and other features both inside and outside the structure.
Fraternal organizations such as the Elks had tremendous membership and activity during the early part of the 20th century. This enabled the Queensboro Lodge to not only finance construction of its massive clubhouse, but also include within it a jaw-dropping number of amenities for its members.
They included an industrialsized kitchen, a dining room measuring 1,728 sq. ft., game rooms, a meeting hall with balcony seating, a six-lane basement bowling alley with automatic pin setters, a 60′-long bar and a barbershop. The annex featured a first-floor swimming pool and a gymnasium.
Between the 1920s and 1940s, the Elks Lodge proved popular not only among club members but also politicians. Many elected officials who grew to prominence in the borough at that time were counted among the Queensboro lodge’s members.
One popular event the lodge hosted for decades was a six-day fund-raising bar that some considered “the social event of the year in the greater Queens area,” as noted in the lodge’s application for inclusion on the national historic register. Among the prizes given away at the event were two dozen Cadillacs.
But like many other fraternal organizations, membership and activity in the Queensboro Elks plunged over the latter half of the 20th century. During the 1990s, with the Queensboro Elks membership down by 90 percent from a high of 6,000 in the 1960s, it began renting out its premises to local families for various celebrations.
The Elks Lodge also rented its lodge to media outlets and Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) for its wrestling events. Led by promoter Paul Heyman, ECW garnered a cult following during the 1990s for its “hardcore” and edgy style; popular as it was, ECW folded in 2001 due to financial difficulty. World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) subsequently purchased the brand and its copyright.
New Life Church, upon purchasing the main building in 2001, converted the meeting hall into a worship area where congregants gather for weekly services. The church also made various renovations to the lodge including creating a health clinic, a food pantry and a youth center.
