York, PA Had Its Own Wall Street
Wall Street, 1903
A colleague recently asked me where Wall Street used to be in York. It doesn’t appear on present-day maps. A search through old maps with a magnifying glass located a tiny little Wall Street in the 1903 Atlas of York published by Frederick B. Roe.
It ran just a quarter block, heading north from Mason Alley, just west of Water Street (now Pershing Ave.) That little bit of Mason before the Codorus creek is now more or less the exit from the rabbittransit York transfer station off of West King Street. The site of Wall Street and adjacent buildings is now a parking lot.
Looking at that map got me wondering about where Mason Alley got that name. The earliest Masonic Hall I know of still stands on the northeast corner of South Beaver Street and W. Clark. That building wasn’t constructed until 1863-64.
An article in Gibson’s History of York County by A. Hiestand Glatz outlines the history of Free Masonry in York County. Glatz says the first Masonic charter in York was granted in 1810. He names several locations that the lodge, known as St. John’s No. 123, met in on South George Street, but I haven’t yet been able to locate any of them also adjacent to Mason Alley. He says the charter was lost in 1836, during the strong Anti-Masonic movement in Pennsylvania, and meetings ceased.
Masonic Lodge No. 266, which had the Beaver and Clark building constructed, was chartered later, in 1852.
If anyone can pinpoint an Masonic lodge in the on Mason Alley (now gentrified to Avenue), please let me know.
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What happened to Baptist Alley?
