Sandy Spring Oddfellows Lodge

Complete Restoration

Located next to the Sharp Street Methodist Church in Historic Sandy Spring, the Oddfellows Lodge was built in the 1920’s to service the social needs of the African-American community located nearby.  The Oddfellows acted simultaneously as a fraternal organization, community organizer, social hall, & grass roots social-services for its various community members & their families.  After the passage of the Social Securities Act of 1935, the organization countrywide lost one of its core responsibilities as an organization; membership slowly declined through the decades until closing in the mid 1970’s.  Today, the restoration of buildings such as the Oddfellows hall, represents an important effort to sustain the legacy of historic  African-American communities throughout Maryland, which are rapidly evaporating into modern developments.  The preservation of these structures helps display the requirement for self determination & grass-roots community action that were placed on Afrinan-American communities everywhere in the Nation, in the decades after the end of reconstruction.  

Hestia Restoration participated in phase two of the restoration phase of this project. This included the complete two story interior restoration of the space. All exterior walls were furred out to “plumb and straight” to install tongue and groove beadboard on all of the wall surfaces as an interior cladding. We framed out all new partition walls in the second story to create multiple office spaces. We fabricated custom wood hand railings on the stairs to interface modern code requirements and historic aesthetics. We also built an ADA compliant wheelchair ramp and front porch. In a subsequent phase, the client elected to install a new bathroom on the first floor and we framed out the room and installed custom wainscotting and trim.