1925 - Camden Lodge of Elks Building - Camden, NJ - Dated Buildings and Cornerstones on Waymarking.com

The cornerstone can be found on the front right of this building. It is a foot from the ground. I could not tell if it was a separate granite block or simply part of the entire granite facade and merely made to look like a separate block. There are twenty plus buildings just like this one, built the same time as this one on the NRHP. Curiously, this one is not protected and was never placed on the NRHP.

The stone bottom gives rise to a brick building. Over the front entrance is amazing relief work, what looks like baskets overflowing with fruit. Originally, this building housed the Camden Elks so perhaps there is some kind of symbolic connection. The best relief work can be found at the top of the two Corinthian columns flanking the entrance. Absolutely gorgeous!

I found a narrative on this building created by Phil Cohen on a fabulous website created by him which has secured and protected the history of late 18th, 19th and 20th century Camden. It is the most comprehensive site I have ever seen for Camden and for Camden County.

On April 1, 1925 Ground was broken on by the Camden Lodge of Elks for its new home at 807 Cooper Streets. A series of stores were built about 1926, one of which was occupied by Horn & Hardart for many, many years, on the site. A new Elks home was completed on Cooper Street, above Broadway, in May of 1926. The Elks remained at that location into the 1960s, when falling membership brought on by changes in American society and in part by conditions in Camden saw the organization leave the city. sometime after 1967. The hall was also made available to other organizations such as Camden Post 980, Veterans of Foreign Wars. SOURCE

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