Inside the Effort to Preserve Hyattsville’s Masonic Lodge History

A local developer is collaborating with area groups to preserve artifacts from the Hyattsville Masonic Lodge.

Located at 4207 Gallatin St., down the street from St. Jerome Academy, the Mount Hermon Lodge No. 179 is being restored by its owner, Hyattsville resident Kayleigh Kulp, who plans to convert the interior into a mixed-use development.

Before work could begin, Kulp faced the question of what to do with everything salvaged from inside the lodge, including formal chairs and photographs from the 1800s that belonged to the Masons.

Much of the material was slated to be thrown out, but Kulp worked with the Anacostia Trails Heritage Area to arrange temporary storage for the salvaged items in five storage units in College Park.

Now, graduate students from the University of Maryland Library and Museum Sciences program are helping sort and catalog the material, which will be preserved and digitized by the Maryland State Archives.

In an Instagram video about the project, Kulp said that she wants to find ways to incorporate some of the material into the redeveloped building in order to maintain its historic ties to the community.

“To me, these artifacts aren’t ‘old stuff,'” she wrote. “They’re the narrative backbone of this building — and if the building’s use was going to change, its story still needed to come with it.”

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