Anthony Di Lorenzo,
New York
ornamentalist, held two contracts for
interior decoration
in the Masonic Temple - #1 (Corrado
Parducci) $13,160.00 and #2 for $9,680.00. Thomas Di
Lorenzo’s contract for interior decoration amounted to $59,074.00. Joe
Parducci worked in the New
York firm of Ricci, DiLorenzo and Aldolino as a very young man. When
the firm broke up, he stayed with DiLorenzo who was an ornamentalist and Joe
was the sculptor. Joe met
Albert Kahn in
New York City
who urged him to come to
Detroit and work on two bank buildings on
Griswold Street
. Joe came to Detroit to work for only a couple of months. Anthony
DiLorenzo had some work here and Kahn wanted
Parducci. He worked
indirectly for Kahn through DiLorenzo. Other work came from Detroit
architects Donaldson & Meier, Smith, Hinchman & Grylls, and George D. Mason.
The first 8 months, 1924
to middle of 1925, Joe worked under DiLorenzo. The Masonic Temple contracts
were DiLorenzos’ jobs until Parducci bought them out for $5,000.00.
William F. Gurche had
the contract for the exterior sculpture. Henry Steinman, a
New York sculptor working
in the Detroit studio of William F. Gurche, sculpted the Tylers on the four
towers of the Ritual Building . Leo William Friedlander, a New York sculptor
and 1913 winner of the
Prix de Rome, was
paid $1,100.00 to sculpt the three figures –
King Solomon, King
Hiram and Hiram Abbif – over the Ritual Tower entrance.
All the light fixtures
were custom-made by the Sterling Bronze Company of New York . The
lighting fixtures
in the lodges, hallways, and foyers were designed for the tasks at hand.
Corrado Giuseppe Parducci's
lobby design was
reportedly adapted from an old
castle in Palermo, Sicily . Parducci did model the 5’ bronze floor plaque
depicting Strength, Truth and Beauty. He sculpted the two plaques in the stone
walls of the interior stairs of the
Scottish Rite entrance.
These two are repeated in the lobby as plaster plaques.
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