Mystic Tie Lodge was born into a country still finding its footing. It was November 1868 — the smoke of the Civil War had barely cleared, the nation was in the throes of Reconstruction, and railroads were pushing the frontier west. Out of that unsettled moment, a group of Indianapolis Masons set out to build something meant to last.

Late in the evening of Saturday, September 6, 1868, seventeen Master Masons in good standing with other city lodges gathered in the lodge room of Centre Lodge No. 23 to discuss forming a new lodge of their own. Their names were: John Caven, E. J. Hardesty, John Reynolds, Charles W. Hewes Jr., E. S. Folsom, H. S. Bigham, Charles E. Brigham, George B. Engle Jr., G. W. Davis, Henry C. Adams, George W. Sloan, William S. Cone, A. B. Howard, Austin B. Prather, Melville Strong, Joseph W. Smith, and Eben Smith.

With John Caven acting as chairman, the group agreed unanimously to petition the Grand Lodge for permission to organize as Mystic Tie Lodge, and to recommend Caven as Worshipful Master, George B. Engle Jr. as Senior Warden, and Joseph W. Smith as Junior Warden. The remaining offices were filled the same evening: John Reynolds as Treasurer, William S. Cone as Secretary, E. J. Hardesty as Senior Deacon, A. B. Howard as Junior Deacon, Charles Brigham and Austin B. Prather as Stewards, and Hayden S. Bigham as Tyler.

Grand Master Martin H. Rice granted the dispensation on November 17, 1868, and Worshipful Master John Caven called the first meeting of Mystic Tie Lodge to order on November 24, 1868, in the lodge room of the Aetna Building on North Pennsylvania Street. The Lodge received its full charter the following year, on May 25, 1869.

Adapted from Century of Dedication: A Short History of Mystic Tie Lodge No. 398, F. & A.M., 1868–1968, by James B. Gale (1969).

Mystic Tie Lodge meets at 650 North Meridian Street, inside the Scottish Rite Cathedral. It's one of the city's active event venues: weddings, concerts, and public programs run through it year-round, drawing roughly 100,000 visitors annually. It's also home to something unique in the country — the only Scottish Rite Valley with its own resident orchestra, founded in 1946 by longtime Indianapolis Symphony conductor Fabien Sevitzky. The building's 1929 Skinner pipe organ and carillon — originally 63 English-cast bells donated by Arthur R. Baxter, reworked to 54 in 1965 — still anchor concerts and recitals held there today.

Inside, two bronze statues in the main lobby represent the Spirit of Life and Maternal Love. The building is open for public tours Tuesday through Friday, 10am to 2pm.

In a 1996 poll, the Indianapolis Business Journal found it to be the city's most popular historic building, and the second-favorite building of any type.

If a building like this makes you curious what happens inside it, we'd welcome the chance to show you.

The building was designed by Indianapolis architect George F. Schreiber and built between 1927 and 1929, at a cost of roughly $2.5 million — a considerable sum for the era. The limestone alone required 120 semitrailer loads from a quarry in Bloomington. Its style is generally described as Tudor Gothic, drawing on the same architectural vocabulary as the medieval cathedrals of England: a nave, a crossing tower, a choir — the same layout stonemasons’ guilds once used, echoing the operative roots that speculative Masonry still traces its symbolism to.

The numbers built into the structure aren’t accidental. The building runs 330 feet long by 120 feet wide, and nearly every major dimension divides evenly by 33 — a deliberate nod to the three degrees of the Craft. The tower rising behind the entrance stands 210 feet tall and houses a carillon of dozens of bells, among the largest in the country when it was installed.

In 1983 the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places. In a 1996 poll, the Indianapolis Business Journal found it to be the city’s most popular historic building. At one point, the International Association of Architects listed it among the seven most beautiful buildings in the world.

For Mystic Tie, the building is simply home — the venue, not a program, not a membership, not an affiliation. The lodge rents space and meets within these walls the same way any tenant might occupy a building whose architecture happens to be extraordinary.