The Scottish Rite Temple, now known as The Temple Downtown, is a historic former masonic

Freemasonry

Freemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million, including approximately 150,000 under the jurisdictions of the Grand Lodge...

 building in Mobile

Mobile, Alabama

Mobile is the third most populous city in the Southern US state of Alabama and is the county seat of Mobile County. It is located on the Mobile River and the central Gulf Coast of the United States. The population within the city limits was 195,111 during the 2010 census. It is the largest...

, Alabama

Alabama

Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...

, United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. It was built to serve as the meeting place for the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry

Scottish Rite

The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry , commonly known as simply the Scottish Rite, is one of several Rites of the worldwide fraternity known as Freemasonry...

. The building was designed by George Bigelow Rogers

George Bigelow Rogers

George Bigelow Rogers was an American architect, best known for the wide variety of buildings that he designed in Mobile, Alabama. Born in Illinois in 1870, he studied painting in France, then apprenticed from 1894 to 1898 as an architect in Hartford, Connecticut. He stopped in Mobile in 1901,...

, a local Mobile architect who was responsible for designing many of the city's buildings during this period. The cornerstone

Cornerstone

The cornerstone concept is derived from the first stone set in the construction of a masonry foundation, important since all other stones will be set in reference to this stone, thus determining the position of the entire structure.Over time a cornerstone became a ceremonial masonry stone, or...

 was laid on November 30, 1921, with the building completed in 1922. It is the only intact example of the Egyptian Revival

Egyptian Revival architecture

Egyptian Revival is an architectural style that uses the motifs and imagery of ancient Egypt. It is attributed generally to the public awareness of ancient Egyptian monuments generated by Napoleon's conquest of Egypt and Admiral Nelson's defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of the Nile during 1798....

 style in Mobile. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places

National Register of Historic Places

The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...

 on January 5, 1984. It was sold in 1996 to a private citizen and reopened as an banqueting venue.

Architecture

Having been inspired by the architecture of Karnak

Karnak

The Karnak Temple Complex—usually called Karnak—comprises a vast mix of decayed temples, chapels, pylons, and other buildings, notably the Great Temple of Amun and a massive structure begun by Pharaoh Ramses II . Sacred Lake is part of the site as well. It is located near Luxor, some...

, the building features several forms seen in Ancient Egyptian

Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...

 architecture

Ancient Egyptian architecture

The Nile valley has been the site of one of the most influential civilizations which developed a vast array of diverse structures encompassing ancient Egyptian architecture...

. The building itself is in the form of an Egyptian pylon

Pylon (architecture)

Pylon is the Greek term for a monumental gateway of an Egyptian temple It consists of two tapering towers, each surmounted by a cornice, joined by a less elevated section which enclosed the entrance between them. The entrance was generally about half the height of the towers...

. The monumental entrance, inspired by the Bab al-Amara Gate at Karnak, is flanked by a pair of sphinxes

Sphinx

A sphinx is a mythical creature with a lion's body and a human head or a cat head.The sphinx, in Greek tradition, has the haunches of a lion, the wings of a great bird, and the face of a woman. She is mythicised as treacherous and merciless...

, by the sculptor Allen W. Barr. The roof is surmounted by two protruding obelisk

Obelisk

An obelisk is a tall, four-sided, narrow tapering monument which ends in a pyramid-like shape at the top, and is said to resemble a petrified ray of the sun-disk. A pair of obelisks usually stood in front of a pylon...

s that originally functioned as chimneys.