Vegas
Lodge #32
Las Vegas NV
Vegas Lodge #32's first meeting room was in a second floor room, over the First State Bank, in downtown Las Vegas. The Lodge was offered an opportunity to purchase the entire structure for $18,000 - with the bank guaranteeing that the revenue from the lower floor of the building would pay off the loan in eight years. That offer was declined by the Lodge. That property, at the corner of First and Fremont Streets (now the heart of "Casino Center") is worth quite a bit more today!
The lodge then moved several other times, into rented quarters, until purchasing a piece of property one and a half blocks south of Fremont Street, on the east side of Third Street, where they built a spacious building, pictured at the bottom of this page, in which they met until the building pictured above, one block east of Las Vegas Boulevard South ("The Strip") on Charleston Boulevard, was completed, in 1982. This property occupies the majority of the 600-block of Charleston Blvd., and the Lodge was allowed to pick its address - thence the "6-32" number for the home of Vegas #32.
Chartered in 1908, Vegas Lodge #32 is the oldest surviving Lodge in Clark County (Searchlight Lodge #31 having closed and merged with Vegas #32 in 1936) - and the next chartered Lodge being Boulder City #37, constituted in 1932.
Of all the Lodges in Nevada, Vegas #32 is one of the very few that has never suffered damage from fire, although fire did visit the offices of Henry M. Lillas, Secretary of the lodge, in about 1921, and many of the early records, kept at his office, were then lost forever.
The picture below is the original architect's rendering of the old downtown Lodge building, dated 1936.
