Five lodges.
One craft.
How five Masonic lodges spread across five towns in northern New Jersey became the single continuous lodge that meets today.
The lodge that meets today is the gathering of five older lodges into one continuous craft. Five warrants, five histories, five names. Across one hundred and forty years, two streams of consolidation and merger flowed together. The diagram below traces that descent.
The lodge begins in Closter. On January 17, 1867, a warrant was granted to a small group of Master Masons in Bergen County, establishing Alpine Lodge No. 77 under the Grand Lodge of New Jersey. The first Worshipful Master — the first to sit in the East for what would become this lodge — was Brother Robert F. Rich.
The warrant did not survive the century intact. In 1894, it was destroyed by fire. A new warrant was issued on January 24, 1895, and the lodge carried on without interruption.
For almost forty years, Alpine Lodge No. 77 was the only lodge of its kind in this corner of Bergen County. That changed in 1906.
Tilden Lodge No. 183 — Dumont, 1906
On March 27, 1906, Tilden Lodge No. 183 received its warrant and opened in Dumont. Named for Samuel Tilden, the New York governor and presidential candidate, the lodge drew its membership from the growing residential towns of the county's interior. It would serve Dumont for nearly three-quarters of a century before the first consolidation.
Tenakill Lodge No. 266 — Tenafly, 1927
April 21, 1927 was a busy day for Masonry in Bergen County. Two warrants were granted on the same date. The first established Tenakill Lodge No. 266 in Tenafly — named for the Tenakill Brook that runs through the borough. Tenafly would eventually become the permanent home of the consolidated lodge.
William L. Daniels Lodge No. 269 — Bergenfield, 1927
The second warrant that same day went to William L. Daniels Lodge No. 269 in Bergenfield, named in honor of a prominent brother of the district. This lodge and Tenakill, though chartered on the same day, would take very different paths — one anchored in Tenafly, the other in Bergenfield — before they finally merged in 2007, eighty years later.
Teaneck Lodge No. 274 — Teaneck, 1929
Two years after the double founding, Teaneck Lodge No. 274 received its warrant on April 18, 1929. The lodge served the growing township of Teaneck through the Depression, the war years, and the post-war suburban expansion that transformed northern New Jersey.
By the late 1970s, the Craft across the country was contracting. Membership had peaked in the mid-century and was declining. Lodges that had thrived in the postwar years found themselves stretched thin. The lodges of northern Bergen County faced the same pressures. Their response was not dissolution — it was union.
1980 — Alpine and Tilden Become One
On April 24, 1980, Alpine Lodge No. 77 and Tilden Lodge No. 183 consolidated, carrying the Alpine charter number forward. The new lodge was called Alpine Tilden Lodge No. 77, and it continued to serve the communities of Closter and Dumont as a single body.
1984 — William L. Daniels and Teaneck Merge
Four years later, on April 25, 1984, William L. Daniels Lodge No. 269 and Teaneck Lodge No. 274 merged under the William L. Daniels name and number. The two lodges, nearly twin-chartered in 1927 and 1929, were now a single lodge based in Bergenfield.
1989 — Three Streams Become One
The most significant consolidation came on April 13, 1989, when Alpine Tilden Lodge No. 77 and Tenakill Lodge No. 266 came together. Three distinct lodge histories — Alpine, Tilden, Tenakill — unified under a single warrant, a single name, and a single meeting place in Tenafly. The lodge was now Alpine Tilden Tenakill Lodge No. 77.
2007 — The Final Union
After nearly two decades of parallel operation, the last merger brought William L. Daniels Lodge No. 269 into the fold. On the warrant of April 13, 1989 — carried forward — all five lines of descent became one. The five towns of Closter, Dumont, Tenafly, Bergenfield, and Teaneck were bound together in a single lodge at 404 Tenafly Road.
It had taken 140 years. It required five separate warrants, four separate acts of consolidation and merger, and the deliberate choice of many men in many hard moments to combine rather than close. The result is the lodge that meets today.
From the first installation in 1868 to the present, the lodge has kept a record of every man who served as an officer — 160 years of installations, more than 448 brothers. Some served a year. Some served decades. The full record is available in the Officers Lineups, where every name can be traced across every year.