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Self-portrait by Karen Burton in her studio at the Masonic Temple (Photo courtesy the artist)
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The building in the 100 block of West Broad Street (Scan from the catalog for “Alumni of the Masonic Temple”)
More than four decades ago, long before anyone started talking about a downtown Richmond Arts and Cultural District, artists found a home in the former Masonic Temple at West Broad and Adams streets — until the city kicked them out.
Designed by Baltimore architect Jackson C. Gott, the Richardson Romanesque temple opened in 1893 and served as a cultural venue for the community until the Masons vacated it in 1971.
John Russell Good, a family-practice physician and a founder of Chippenham Hospital, purchased the temple soon afterward. Good’s sister, painter Lisa Kiniry, considered opening a gallery there. That didn’t materialize, but a group of artists came to the temple’s doors after leaving studios in Shockoe Slip’s Bowers Brothers Coffee building because of its reclamation by developer Andrew J. Asch Jr. This group included VCU professors Morris Yarowsky, Jim Bumgardner, José Puig, Sal Federico and Myron Helfgott, along with graduates Jeff Davis and Bruce Behrman.
On Nov. 15, 1973, during preparations for the move-in, Puig, a sculptor, jimmied open an elevator shaft and fell one story to his death. This almost halted the temple migration. But the artists needed a place to work, and for a decade, securing a studio at the temple became a rite of artistic passage.
A boxing ring on the third floor hosted bouts on Wednesday nights. Pigeons flew in through broken windows and made their deposits. Dead birds fell to the ballroom floor. A pay phone never stopped ringing. Toilets clogged. Derelicts lounged on the front steps.
For a catalog accompanying the “Alumni of the Masonic Temple” exhibition at the Anderson Gallery in the summer of 1983, painter Karen Bryant Doggette recalled “stacks of huge paintings exploding into all of the hallways, discovering stairways and entryways that led to the turret or roof where I took a lot of photographs, hearing the bell [of the balky freight elevator] — the last person up must take the hand elevator down to pick up a new arrival.”
Painter Katherine Bowling, at the temple from 1976 to 1978, described the building as “a mysterious place to work in — the stairs were always dark and sometimes wet with the plaster from the walls falling down.” Bowling continued, “There was always someone available to talk with, to drink with, to show what one had just finished in the studio.”
Following the artists’ lead, the Richmond Federated Arts Council sought to cobble together a downtown arts district through the rehabilitation of underused properties between Adams and Jefferson streets.
Masonic Temple artist Wolfgang Jasper's 1972 oil painting “P 27” (Scan from the catalog for “Alumni of the Masonic Temple”)
Masonic Temple artist Wolfgang Jasper (Scan from the catalog for “Alumni of the Masonic Temple”)
Commissioned by the city, a multidisciplinary committee of VCU professors, students and community members delivered a three-volume study in May 1982 that demonstrated sleeping potential. The report envisioned a revival for the Empire, Regency and Maggie Walker theaters; suggested making the 19th-century Steamer Co. No. 5 building a museum; recommended Jackson Ward restorations; and advised converting the 1914 Richmond Dairy (the iconic “Milk Bottle Building”) into an arts center modeled after the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria.
The consultants further advised reconfiguring Jefferson Street south of Broad as a pedestrian mall dubbed Brook Crossing. They identified the Masonic Temple as the project keystone. In July 1982, CSX Corp. pledged $100,000 to the arts council’s foundation to staff and program the building. The city used a federal grant to purchase the Masonic Temple for $175,000.
Responding to a query for this article, James E. “Plunky” Branch Jr., an acclaimed jazz musician who served as the foundation’s executive director, says that Mayor Henry Marsh III sought to harness the energy from a plethora of downtown organizations in the direction of a temple-centered arts district.
However, the planned rehabilitation of the Masonic Temple meant the artists working there would have to leave. The task of notifying the artists fell to Branch. Musician and craftsman Danny Finney, who had a fifth-floor studio, recalls an awkward meeting. “It all just seemed like they wanted to get rid of us,” he says. “We were an unkempt nuisance.”
But a political shift derailed the arts district plan. Roy A. West won election to City Council in 1982, and his colleagues selected him as mayor. Branch says that West “and his council faction would not support the arts district project, largely because the district was so closely associated with the previous administration.”
The city then turned its attention to the Sixth Street Festival Marketplace, an ill-fated attempt to compete with suburban malls that opened in 1985 and lingered until 2003.
In September 1983, the foundation announced a halt to its campaign to raise $7 million for the acquisition, restoration and operating costs of the temple and nearby buildings.
“The expendability of artists seems to be the unspoken and unspeakable underlying assumption,” Marilyn A. Zeitlin, then director of the Anderson Gallery, wrote in the catalog of the 1983 alumni exhibition. Taking a philosophical tone, Zeitlin wrote that the move ultimately benefited most of the artists and reinvigorated or changed their approach. “Even those who suffered most from their forced relocation will continue to make art.”
Masonic Temple artist Caryl Burtner's 1983 color Xerox artwork “Betsy Wetsy, Poodle & Me” (Scan from the catalog for “Alumni of the Masonic Temple”)
Masonic Temple artist Caryl Burtner (Scan from the catalog for “Alumni of the Masonic Temple”)
Among the Masonic Temple alumni still working in the region are Finney, Caryl Burtner, Wayne Fitzgerald, Reni Gower, Wolfgang Jasper, Bernard Martin and Louis Poole.
On Jasper’s last temple visit in 1982, he entered to find studio locks broken and materials heaped on the floor. He dashed to the police, who responded quickly, with sirens screaming. The burglars fled and the belongings were saved. “But then, the police called me,” Jasper remembers, “and said, ‘We’re keeping an eye on you. We know you masterminded this whole thing!’ ” And he laughs.
Starting in 1991, developer William V. Cabaniss gave the Masonic Temple a massive overhaul. Today, as the Renaissance Center, the temple is a downtown event space with apartments, offices and shops.
Without the city’s official designation, artists once again took up residence on Broad Street — several pushed from their Shockoe cradles by rising rent — by opening galleries during the 1990s. The Richmond Arts and Cultural District — with boundaries encompassing a large portion of downtown — became official in 2012. This year, as Richmond prepares for the opening of a new cultural landmark, VCU’s Institute for Contemporary Art, the city made Southern Methodist University’s National Center for Arts Research list of the top 20 most vibrant arts communities in the United States.
Painter Jeff Davis concluded in his entry for the 1983 alumni exhibition catalog, “The temple studios are gone. Artists displaced for an ‘arts’ district.”
