Phoenix Lodge No.144 was founded over 150 years ago when San Francisco was growing swiftly from a community of tents and shanties to an emerging city with the permanent aspects of brick and stone. Ships from every seafaring nation of the world anchored in the spacious harbor to discharge and pick up cargos and bring ashore more and more Argonauts and settlers. It was during our fine city’s early development that a difference of opinion arose among the Brethren of Occidental Lodge No. 22 over California’s future as either a member of the Union or the Confederacy. This disagreement led fourteen supporters of the Union to demit from Occidental Lodge and they subsequently received a dispensation from the Grand Master to form a new lodge named Oriental Lodge No. 144 on May 10, 1861. Over the next century and half, the men of Oriental Lodge played a vital role as California changed from a frontier land to a great state of varied economic and national importance.

 

To this proud tradition, brethren have been added from the Forest Hill Lodge No. 534 and Paul Revere Lodge No. 462. Forest Hill Lodge was historically composed of dentists of San Francisco and residents of the St. Francis Wood neighborhood. Paul Revere Lodge was formed in 1916 to be the first “Cosmopolitan Lodge” of San Francisco that banded together good men of true different beliefs and ethnic origins. To reflect the proud histories of the individual lodges that consolidated, in 2000 we changed our name to Phoenix Lodge No. 144, after that mythical bird of the Orient that flies on the flag of the City and County of San Francisco, California.