
Across the street from the Elk County Courthouse, the buff brick, four-story temple stands out in a commercial district of two and three stories. The building spans the block and has matching facades facing Court Street and S. Mill Avenue. The Chicago Masonic Temple of 1891–1892, designed by Burnham and Root, at twenty-two stories has a similar facade and window treatment, with round-arched windows at the base and top, and rectangular windows between. That building's impact on the national building scene could not have escaped Krape's notice and perhaps it was the model for Ridgway's temple. The top story, with its elongated round-arched windows and the terra-cotta Masonic emblems in the spandrels below, was a ceremonial space.