Pre-Dance Complex: The Odd Fellows Hall 

     We aknowledge the area now known as Cambridgeport is located on the acestral land of the Massachusett people. In 1630, the first recorded colonial settlement in Cambridge, Soden Farm, included the land that The Odd Fellows Hall 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 the Odd Fellows Hall.

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 in England. The official emblem of the Odd Fellows are three chains linked together, representing the degrees of Friendship, Love, and Truth. This emblem is tiled in mosaic at the building’s entrance. 

     In 1884 “Boston architects Henry W. Hartwell and William C. Richardson design the five story red brick commercial building, 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 is $40,000. The first cornerstone is laid in a ceremony on Bunker Hill Day.” See the architects’ design of the building in The American Architect and Building News magazine below.

– Cambridge Historical Commission