An Errant History of 311 W. Main St.

Former Shiloh Lodge F. & A.M. No. 588 Worshipful Master Joe McQuillin, owner of in Lansdale, provided a backstory on 311 W. Main Street at the Lansdale last month – a tale of miscommunication, poor decisions, broken promises and a transaction worth $450,000.

McQuillin said he was at a recent North Penn Rotary Club meeting speaking with new Shiloh Lodge member Jack Chun, an architect who designed the Montgomery County Cultural Center in Norristown, the North Penn Rotary Bandshell at and the former Lansdale Performing Arts Center.

Their discussion was on the topic of the old Shiloh Lodge Masonic Temple aka the former Lansdale Center of the Performing Arts aka 311 W. Main Street.

McQuillin told of how former Mayor Mike DiNunzio, former borough Manager Lee Mangan and former Shiloh Lodge No. 558 Worshipful Master James Wolstenholme made a deal to take 311 W. Main Street by eminent domain.

“At that point, everybody thought the borough came in and took the lodge,” McQuillin said. “That’s what everybody thought in the lodge.”

McQuillin said when he took over as lodge master in 2005, he stood up in front of 100 members and read a letter that said Shiloh Lodge gave the building to the borough.

“The lodge went to the borough; the borough did not take the building,” McQuillin said. “The master of the lodge (Wolstenholme) gave it to them for $450,000.”

He said the borough still “took” the lodge by eminent domain, thereby avoiding taxes on the property.

Lansdale Borough used a $375,000 revitalization grant from Montgomery County toward the purchase price of the building.

In 2004, Wolstenholme was quoted in a Philadelphia Inquirer article that the lodge “wanted to sell because the building was costly to maintain and inaccessible to older members who couldn’t manage the stairs.”

McQuillin said Wolstenholme – who is no longer a member of Shiloh Lodge, and is now with Norristown Lodge No. 620 – kept Shiloh Lodge members “two to three weeks behind” on information.

Furthermore, there was an issue that arose with Lansdale orthodontist Dr. Leon Strohecker and his museum, which was located in 311 W. Main St.

McQuillin said Strohecker had a five-year lease.

“The borough didn’t want to buy him out of the lease,” McQuillin said. “The borough didn’t want to relocate him. It would cost $85,000 to move the museum.”

McQuillin said both parties had to “wait until it played out.”

“When the borough acquired the building, Wolstenholme had nothing in place in the lease for him to stay there. He said, ‘Just take it.’ The borough asked the lodge to stay for 18 months. They had to because Strohecker wasn’t going to leave.”

McQuillin also claimed the borough agreed to pay $5,000 to relocate Shiloh Lodge to its current location at MacCalla Lodge in Souderton.

“The borough never paid $5,000,” McQuillin said. “This was all under Mangan.”

McQuillin said the borough wanted Shiloh Lodge out as soon as possible to convert it.

“It was a done deal,” he said of the sale.

Councillor-elect Denton Burnell, an attendee at the public town hall session, asked if the sale is legally binding since the lodge, as a whole, didn’t vote to approve the sale.

“The Master has total control,” McQuillin said.

McQuillin added that the “whole key to that lodge” was the elevator and the third-floor lodge room.

He said both of these things could have made the former performing arts center a viable theater.

“They could have built onto the roof and used the lodge room by taking seats and turning them,” he said. “It would have functioned and functioned immediately. If they finished the lodge room and elevator, you would have had a theater.”

He also said a chair lift for the stairs was brought up in 1994, but it was deemed useless.

“They calculated you could move four people an hour,” McQuillin said.

McQuillin also said no one looked into applying for 311 W. Main Street to be on the National Historic Register.

The building was constructed as a Masonic temple in 1910. The ground floor had a banquet hall, an auditorium on the second floor and the lodge meeting room on the third floor. A theater was built in 1938.

“There’s no marquee, no front entrance, and now we’re stuck with it,” said Burnell. “The long and short of it is the borough dumped $4 million into it, and it will never get a return on its investment.”