Scottish Rite Cathedral

A monumental Neoclassical temple faced in pale granite and limestone ashlar, its long Lindell front dominated by a colossal recessed colonnade of fluted columns rising through the upper two stories. A Greek-key frieze band set with carved rosettes crosses the facade, and above the three bronze entrance doors a bronze double-headed eagle spreads between the incised legends SCOTTISH RITE CATHEDRAL and VALLEY OF SAINT LOUIS. Broad granite steps climb to the doors; the low terrace balustrade carries carved stone urns wreathed with rams' heads. A granite base incised with Masonic dedications wraps the lower wall, and a plain attic story caps the composition.

The St. Louis Valley of the Scottish Rite — a branch of Freemasonry — built this Lindell Boulevard cathedral in the early 1920s to house its degree work, meetings, and public events. The Grand Lodge of Missouri laid the cornerstone on December 16, 1922, and the completed building, designed by the St. Louis architect William B. Ittner at a cost of about $2 million, opened in 1924. Ittner, better known for the scores of St. Louis public schools he designed, gave the Masons a Greek temple: a 235-foot limestone front, a colossal colonnade, and Masonic mottoes cut into the granite base — among them a dedication to "freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and free public education." Behind the monumental front, the auditorium was engineered to seat some 3,000 people with no columns to obstruct the view, under a wide proscenium and a Kimball organ installed with the building. The cathedral has served the Scottish Rite continuously since. Its Kimball organ reached its centennial in 2024, and the building remains in Masonic use on Midtown's stretch of Lindell near Saint Louis University, a monumental neighbor to the boulevard's apartment towers and churches.