Pre-Dance Complex: The Odd Fellows Hall 

    We acknowledge that the land The Dance Complex exsists on is the ancestral land of the Massachusett people. In 1630, Soden Farm, the first recorded colonial settlement in Cambridge, included the area that The Dance Complex now stands on. A grain store existed on the land for much of the late 1700s and into the late-1800s, when in 1878, the property was sold to The Friendship Hall Association, a precursor to the Odd Fellows Organization. The grain store was cleared to make way for the building of Odd Fellows Hall in 1884.

Who Were The Odd Fellows?

     The International Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF) is a fraternal organization that originated in England in the mid-1700s. By 1825 The Grand Lodge of Odd Fellows was organized in the United States. They were the first American fraternal organization to offer members financial assistance for the sick, needy, and burial of deceased members. In 1843 the American Odd Fellows severed ties with their parent organization. The official emblem of the Odd Fellows are three chains linked together, representing the degrees of Friendship, Love, and Truth. This emblem, as well as IOOF, is tiled in mosaic at the building’s entrance. 

     In 1884 Boston architects Henry W. Hartwell and William C. Richardson designed the five story red brick commercial building that would be known as Odd Fellows Hall. The building is adorned with Romanesque and Sullivanesque decorative detail of pressed brick and terra cotta. Hartwell and Richardson also designed the First Baptist Church in Central Square, and the Exeter Street Theater in Boston. The cost of the building was $40,000, and the first cornerstone was laid in a ceremony on Bunker Hill Day (Cambridge Historial Comission 1990 Landmark Report). See the architects’ design for the building from a copy of The American Architect and Building News magazine, from 1885, below.