PHOTO: Bartow Masonic temple full of symbolism about secretive organization

Wed, 13 May 2020 07:19:25 GMT

Jacob Summerlin financed the first Bartow Masonic temple in 1867, after the city of Bartow had been laid out and named for Confederate Gen. Francis Bartow. There was a church and school on the first floor of the lodge building. The lodge meeting room was upstairs. The lodge disbanded from 1879 until 1883 and was reconstituted as Tuscan Lodge No. 6. The present-day lodge building on South Florida Avenue sits on a Masonic cornerstone laid in 1927.