The eye-catching Egyptian Revival Art-Deco styled Pythian Temple, built in 1927, lies on West 70th Street between Columbus Avenue and Broadway in the neighbourhood of Lincoln Square, Upper West Side in Manhattan (New York).

It was designed by noted Thomas W. Lamb, specialised in theatres, and served as a meeting place, or ‘castle’ in their quarters, for the 120 Pythian Lodges of the order of the Knights of Pythias in New York City.

The secret society was founded in 1864 by Justus H. Rathbone inspired, as regards the name, by a play titled ‘Damon and Pythias’ by Irish poet John Banim and numbered a good 2000 lodges in the US and worldwide as well as a membership over 50000-strong even early this century.

The structure contained no less than 13 lodge rooms and an auditorium equipped with Broadway standard facilities for the society’s pageants as well as a gym and a bowling alley while Assyrian-esque heads adorned the ground floor colonnade and the middle section featured four Pharaonic seated figures reminiscent of those of Ramses II at Abu Simbel.

Nevertheless, the popularity of the society slipped from the early 1940s on, counting near a million members in the early 1920s, so they gradually gave way in the building to Decca Records who set up a music recording studio that saw Bill Haley & the Comets record their renowned track “Rock around the Clock” in 1954 among others.

In 1958, the New York Institute of Technology acquired the premises as their main campus while Decca’s recording studio remained employed into the 1960s and today the edifice shapes a luxury condominium building called simply ‘the Pythian.’