Today, Los Angeles is one of the largest cities in the world—a global center of culture, commerce, and innovation. But when California became a state in 1850, LA was a small Mexican pueblo of about 1,600 people. Spanish was the primary language, and there were few American residents. There were no newspapers, public schools, banks, hospitals, or libraries, and no social agencies or other organizations to help those in need.
In the decades that followed, LA began its transformation from small pueblo into American metropolis. That change was driven by new infrastructure and by the people who believed in what the community could become. They opened schools, built businesses, cared for neighbors, and created the institutions that would define the city’s future. Among those people, many were Freemasons—men who saw a city in transition not simply as a place to live, but as a community to build.
The First American Organization
Among the organizations that emerged as this new community grew was the first to have been instituted by Americans outside the government: a Masonic lodge. Los Angeles № 42 was formally established in 1853, though Freemasons had already been gathering informally in the city as early as 1851. Its members were merchants, civic leaders, and community builders who brought with them their experiences, ideas, and social networks into lodge—and then back into the city around them. Though membership remained modest, expanding from 23 in 1854 to 67 in 1870, the relationships formed within the lodge became part of the larger story of LA’s evolution.
Foundations of a City
Members of Los Angeles № 42 were not simply observers of the city’s development; they helped create the systems and institutions that allowed it to flourish. Their influence reached from government offices and civic institutions to the practical systems—schools, water, transportation, and commerce— that allowed the city to expand.
Among the lodge’s early members were men who helped define the city’s leadership. Alpheus Hodges, a charter member of Los Angeles № 42, became the first mayor after the city’s incorporation in 1850. James Barton, another early Mason, served as Los Angeles County sheriff and became one of the city’s best-known law enforcement figures before his death in 1857. Members of the lodge also served on the Common Council (City Council) and county board of supervisors, helping guide decisions that shaped the young city.
Education was one of the first priorities. When the Common Council created a public school system in 1853, member Joseph Lancaster Brent was appointed its first superintendent. A lawyer and civic leader, Brent helped organize the city’s earliest public education efforts at a time when formal institutions were still coming into existence. He later served a second term overseeing the city’s schools, helping establish an educational structure that would support LA’s future.
Brent laid the administrative groundwork; Mayor Thomas Foster helped give education a physical home. A physician by trade, who served as mayor from 1854 to 1855, Thomas championed the construction of LA’s first public schoolhouse, which opened in 1855 where The Los Angeles Times building now stands. At the time when the young city was creating its first lasting civic institutions, the schoolhouse stood alongside projects to improve streets, public safety, and local government. Foster, an active member of the lodge, saw education as an essential investment in the future: During his inaugural message as mayor, he pledged to “foster and sustain” public schools “in such a manner as becomes intelligent Freemen.”
Infrastructure problems in the growing settlement demanded practical solutions. Among the challenges were contamination issues: The uncovered ditches where residents obtained their water were being polluted by bathers, animals, and laundry use. Lodge member William Dryden helped address one of the city’s earliest public-health challenges by establishing Los Angeles Water Works, introducing a closed-pipe delivery system that expanded access to cleaner water. His work marked a shift from informal pueblo-era systems toward modern municipal services.
Few individuals influenced the economic future of Southern California more than Phineas Banning. A businessman, transportation pioneer, civic booster, and member of the lodge, Banning recognized that the region’s future depended on connecting the inland settlement to the coast. His development of the Wilmington area and the railroad connection between San Pedro and LA in 1869 helped establish the transportation network that would support the area’s rise as a major commercial center.
As LA grew, it needed a new urban framework: Enter Henry Hancock, a surveyor and lodge member, who helped map the city’s streets and introduced surveying methods that reflected the American approach to city planning. His work helped transform a settlement shaped by earlier Spanish and Mexican traditions into the largely grid-based metropolis it is today. The transformation was also visible after the sun went down. Mason William Perry established the Los Angeles Gas Company, which led to the city’s first street lighting in 1867. For residents accustomed to a town illuminated largely by candles, the arrival of gas lighting represented another step toward becoming a modern American city.
Economic growth required institutions capable of supporting investment and commerce. Lodge members—and Masons such as Francis Pliny Fisk Temple and Isais Hellman—were deeply involved in establishing some of LA’s earliest banks, providing the financial foundation that helped fuel the city’s first major period of expansion in the 1860s and 1870s.
Creating Community
Los Angeles required more than roads and buildings; it needed to care for its people.
In a town with no hospitals and no services for the orphaned or abandoned, members of Los Angeles № 42 helped establish some of the earliest social services. Among those pioneers was Abel Stearns, a prominent merchant and influential business figure who used his position and resources to support civic and philanthropic efforts, including the establishment of the Daughters of Charity presence in LA. Fellow supporter of the Daughters of Charity and lodge member John G. Downey was an Irish immigrant, merchant, and future governor of California, whose early civic engagement helped shape the city’s emerging institutional life. In 1879, Downey donated land to help establish the University of Southern California.
In 1856, Benjamin Wilson, a landowner, politician, and former mayor, sold property at a reduced rate to support the creation of the city’s first orphanage, operated by the Daughters of Charity. Two years later, the same organization would open LA’s first hospital, a foundational step forward in social infrastructure. Charitable organizations also took shape within Los Angeles’s diverse communities. In 1854, Jacob Elias, a Jewish merchant who served as master of the lodge in 1857, helped establish the Hebrew Benevolent Society, widely regarded as the city’s first formal charitable organization. Its creation reflected local diversity and the ways different communities built networks of care.
Cultural and educational life followed a similar trajectory, as evidenced when lodge members William Workman, a prominent rancher who later served as mayor, and Philip Sichel, a Germanborn merchant, helped organize the city’s first reading room in 1859. Later, member John G. Downey helped form the Los Angeles Library Association, which opened the city’s first public library in 1873. In the years that followed, Mary Foy, daughter of lodge member John Foy, would become LA’s first female librarian and a key figure in shaping the early library system. Religious and cultural life also mirrored this exciting period of change. Abraham Edelman, a four-time master of the lodge, was an early spritual leader, served as the first rabbi of Congregation B’nai B’rith (now Wilshire Boulevard Temple) from 1862 to 1885. His long tenure helped establish one of the area’s earliest religious institutions.
Lodge members also shaped the emerging media landscape. In 1854, James Waite took ownership of the Los Angeles Star/ La Estrella de Los Ángeles, Los Angeles’s first newspaper, helping guide public discourse during a formative period in the city’s growth. After Waite’s appointment as postmaster, Henry Hamilton, another lodge member, acquired the paper in 1856 and continued its publication until 1873, ensuring continuity in one of the city’s most important early institutions.
Together, these Masons reveal how interconnected life was in during the 1850s through the 1870s. As members of Los Angeles № 42, they formed part of a small and influential network of merchants, civic leaders, and community builders in a city experiencing rapid transformation. (Absent from lodge membership were prominent native “Californios,” such as Pio Pico and Antonio Coronel, who had long shaped the region under Spanish and Mexican rule and continued to influence civic life in this period.)
1883, and 1884, demonstrating that religious and cultural differences could exist alongside shared identity as Masons. While it brought together men of diverse backgrounds, the lodge also embodied the limitations of its era; its ideals of equality did not extend to all members of society. Masonic tenets were also transmitted outside the lodge to the community at large by way of the newspaper. The Los Angeles Star regularly reported on Masonic activities and events and listed the times and locations of stated meetings. Speeches given at Masonic functions were reproduced in their entirety, espousing tenets such as charity, personal integrity, and religious tolerance.
LA’s first newspaper, the Los Angeles Star/La Estrella de Los Angeles, regularly reported on the activities of LA Nº. 42 and advertised the time and place of the lodge’s monthly stated meetings.
Building Trust
Perhaps the greatest contribution of Los Angeles № 42 was not a building, road, or institution; it was the idea that men from different backgrounds could gather as equals. During the 1850s, scores of new immigrants poured into the region from all over the world. By 1860, more than half of the city’s population were immigrants (not native-born Californios). The challenge was how immigrants from different cultural and religious backgrounds would form a shared identity. It was the Masonic lodge, and the many other volunteer organizations that followed, that were the primary drivers for creating community in LA.
The lodge was a place where immigrants from throughout the country could congregate and form bonds of fellowship and trust. In lodge they were all brothers, regardless of their ethnic or religious background. And in Los Angeles № 42, there were members from other parts of the world: England, Ireland, Germany, France, Mexico, and New Zealand. They came from different religious backgrounds, too: Mormon, Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish. While outside the lodge, Thomas Burdick was a Mormon bishop, Edelman was a rabbi, and Lewis Granger was a Baptist minister, inside they met on the level as brothers. That spirit extended into leadership as well. Lodge was a place where men could rise, lead, and shape the organization together. Jewish members served as masters of the lodge in 1857, 1867, 1868, 1881, 1883, and 1884, demonstrating that religious and cultural differences could exist alongside shared identity as Masons. While it brought together men of diverse backgrounds, the lodge also embodied the limitations of its era; its ideals of equality did not extend to all members of society.
Masonic tenets were also transmitted outside the lodge to the community at large by way of the newspaper. The Los Angeles Star regularly reported on Masonic activities and events and listed the times and locations of stated meetings. Speeches given at Masonic functions were reproduced in their entirety, espousing tenets such as charity, personal integrity, and religious tolerance.
Legacy of a Lodge
Roads, schools, banks, newspapers—those were the visible landmarks of a growing Los Angeles. Less visible, but no less important, were the relationships forged inside Los Angeles № 42, where connection, responsibility, and shared purpose became a part of the city’s foundation.
More than 170 years later, Los Angeles № 42 continues to gather in the community it helped shape. The streets, institutions, and skyline around it have changed dramatically, but its central idea remains: Cities are built by people who choose to meet, work, and serve together—always on the level.
Photography by:
Security Pacific National Bank Photo Collection
Los Angeles Public Library
Henry Wilson Coil Library and Museum of Freemasonry
El Pueblo Monument Photo Collection
