History

Saginaw’s position in the Saginaw Valley of mid-Michigan made it one of the great lumber cities of the nineteenth century: the pine forests of northern Michigan were floated down the Saginaw River to the city’s mills, and by the 1870s Saginaw was one of the most productive lumber centers in the world. The depletion of the forests at the turn of the twentieth century forced an economic transition, and Saginaw shifted to automotive manufacturing and sugar beet processing, industries that sustained the city through the first half of the twentieth century.

The Temple Theatre’s 1927 construction date places it at the peak of Saginaw’s automotive-era prosperity. The Masonic Temple complex that housed the theater was one of the most ambitious building projects in the city’s history, combining the ceremonial requirements of the Masonic lodge — a grand hall, ballroom, meeting rooms, and dining facilities — with a public theater that gave the building an income-generating function and a civic presence that pure fraternal halls rarely achieved.

The Temple Theatre Group was formed to preserve and restore the building when the Masonic organization could no longer maintain it commercially. The restoration has returned the theater to operation as a performing arts center for the Saginaw region, which has faced significant economic challenges since the decline of automotive manufacturing in the Great Lakes region.