105 E Willow

​1931 - Masonic Temple

Moderne-Art Deco

This is the only example of this style in Cherokee and it is well executed.  The building (42x100) approximates a public building with its plane smooth stone frontage and its monumental entryway.  Vertical Art Deco ornamentation is restrained, being restricted to the decorative door columns, the window edgings in the stone, and in the deeply cut full-height flutings in either flanking brick sidewall.  The windows are all metal casemate openings.  Decorative stone chevron patterns are used in panels above the door and between the windows.  The brick veneer is polychromatic.  Stone caps (set above each of the flanking rounded fluted recesses) and a soldier brick course cap the side brick walls at the parapet base level.  The facade brickwork is briefly continued on the fronts of each side wall, but then a plain brick forms the sidewalls.  The three-story building is 32 feet high.  The roof is steel framed. 

This fraternal building is of architectural interest because of its style and the fact that it was built in 1931  in the early years of the Great Depression.  Two local banks had closed between late 1930 and 1931  yet this building was conceived and constructed.  This building resulted a dozen years of planned efforts to upgrade the commercial properties along North Second, at the southeast corner of Willow and Second by building a combination commercial and fraternal block