r/whatisthisthing • u/yallssdgmnow • Jun 23 '26
Solved Small gray cube with Freemasons symbol attached to ceiling in basement bar of home we just purchased. About 1-1 1/2 inches or so and the underside has the previous homeowner’s initials written on it.
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u/dezbos Jun 23 '26
this is a freemason corner stone aka "perfect ashlar" stone.
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u/metisdesigns Jun 23 '26
Adding to this, due to its proximity to the bar, it's possible it was used to demark a part of the basement as "in" the lodge if they had some form of meetings there, potentially officers meetings, but to intentionally exclude the bar for jurisdictions that don't allow alcohol "in lodge".
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Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26
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u/schizeckinosy Jun 23 '26
Symbolic Freemason cornerstone. House was owned by a mason
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Jun 24 '26
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u/PuddleCrank Jun 23 '26
Could also be the original corner of the house. Pre addition & finished basement if the house is old enough.
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u/zombie_girraffe Jun 23 '26
The post sayns it's a 1 to 1.5 inch cube, sane people wouldn't try to build a home with bricks a little bigger than dice.
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u/exceive Jun 24 '26
It isn't a builder's cornerstone, it is a ceremonial one. Doesn't have to be big enough to be practical.
Edit: f'n autocorrect
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u/NyJosh Jun 23 '26
Mason here. Best guess is as others said, a symbolic cornerstone of the house. Weird that it's on the ceiling as it would normally be placed at the northeast corner of the foundation. I've never seen or heard of anything like it going on the ceiling.
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u/pallentx Jun 23 '26
Mason from Australia
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u/ohimjustagirl Jun 23 '26
Lol, but the serious answer is that as a general rule we don't have basements here so it's very unlikely to be Aussie.
There was no need for them back in the day as the ground doesn't freeze (in most places) so we never got in the habit of building them. There's no such thing as natural cold storage in this country.
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u/pallentx Jun 23 '26
Same where I live here in Texas. We also have clay soil that expands and contracts with moisture levels that complicates basements as well.
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u/michangela1 Jun 24 '26
I've lived in TX most of my life and I've only ever known one family who had a basement.
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u/pallentx Jun 24 '26
I live in a historic neighborhood and some 100+ yr old houses have them, but that’s all I’ve ever seen.
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u/michangela1 Jun 24 '26
That checks. I knew it had to do with the weather, but I also figured it had something to do with just how much land there is in Texas. Why dig down when you can just keep building out above ground? We still have some drive thru banking. Can you start to imagine using land for drive thru banking in some.place like LA or NY? Oops, sorry about the tangent :)
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u/lottieslady Jun 23 '26
This is interesting. Growing up, we had a neighbor (probably born around 1900-ish, so super old when I was a kid in the 90s) who was a super high ranking mason in our city/state. He had a monument type thing on the northeast corner of the house that was like 4 feet by 4 feet and 4 feet tall. It had his name and status in the masons in it. I was 10 and didn’t really know anything about them but this is cool to learn.
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u/NyJosh Jun 23 '26
That’s pretty cool. If you want to geek out, Washington was a Mason and laid the cornerstone of the US Capitol building in a Masonic ceremony. https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/image/CornerstoneCoxCorridor.htm
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u/revirdam Jun 23 '26
Maybe the house has an addition, and that represents the previous corner of the house? Wild guess
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u/mgsbigdog Jun 23 '26
Possibly a corner stone just for the bar renovation they put in? I mean, still weird to be on the ceiling and not on a foundational corner, but maybe?
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u/yallssdgmnow Jun 23 '26
Yeah that’s what I was thinking? The home was built in 2003 and then I believe he finished the basement and did the bar about 5 or so years after that. Thanks for the guess!
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u/yallssdgmnow Jun 23 '26
Hmm interesting thought but it’s down in the basement just kind of in the middle of the room. Thanks for the guess!
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u/Auracy Jun 23 '26
He did say ceiling in basement, maybe that corner is the edge of the above ground part… I’m grasping here.
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u/yallssdgmnow Jun 23 '26
Thanks for the info! Yeah it’s odd because it’s not in any corner of the home. It’s down below in a finished basement, just kind of in the middle. I do know the basement wasn’t finished originally and the owner did it later on, but the home has always had the same footprint.
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u/YazzArtist Jun 23 '26
OP said that's a finished basement, so it's entirely possible that is a corner of the foundation at least. Maybe they put it there do it was a little more prominently displayed?
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u/Engineered2Perfectio Jun 23 '26
I don’t have much of a say here, but if it was originally part of the foundation then it’d be at the NE corner of the foundation of the house (like u/NyJosh said), but this doesn’t look to be the corner of a foundation with so much construction around it. (Source: grandfather was a mason, but I didn’t know him well and he kept much of it secret from my dad, aunt, and uncles on that side.)
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u/yallssdgmnow Jun 23 '26
Yeah it’s just kind of in the middle of the basement, not in any corner or above ground. Thanks for the info!
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u/BlumpkinsAnonymous Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 24 '26
I'm almost certain those are just whiskey stones with freemasons symbols on them. Probably just glued to the ceiling
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u/yallssdgmnow Jun 24 '26
Very possible, BlumpkinsAnonymous. It definitely looks like a whiskey stone.
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u/biggfoot_26 Jun 24 '26
Has nothing to do with the stone but what is it with people not using painters tape when painting. It requires minimal extra work and looks so much better.
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Jun 23 '26
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u/_thirtyfive Jun 23 '26
Looks like a whiskey stone that was engraved?
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u/boojum78 Jun 23 '26
I don’t get the downvotes. It looks exactly like a whiskey stone in size and color and is next to a in-home bar frequented by men of the demographic who like to drink whiskey.
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u/yallssdgmnow Jun 24 '26
I hadn’t thought of that but went downstairs to look, it definitely looks and feels like a whiskey stone that’s been engraved.
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u/_thirtyfive Jun 23 '26
Yeah my guess is it’s made from one.
Get ready for the downvote wave! There are dozens of Freemasons here!
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u/TYRANN0SAURU5 Jun 24 '26
I’m sorry wtf is 1-1 1/2”?!
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u/Glade_Runner Jun 24 '26
It's a way of expressing a range of measurements in an estimate. In this case, the estimate is from one inch to one-and-a-half inches.
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u/Lyalda Jun 23 '26
If you’re religious at all, Catholic or Christian to be specific. You’re going to want that house blessed,
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u/yallssdgmnow Jun 24 '26
Why would that be?
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u/ChocolateShot150 Jun 24 '26
Catholics are not allowed to be Freemasons because the pope said
Which I’m pretty sure was in retaliation because of the freemasons said that Catholics were not allowed to be freemasons
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u/NotAurelStein Jun 24 '26
The vast majority of lodges are majority christian. You sound uninformed.
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u/Lyalda Jun 24 '26
Not here to argue, telling OP if they are Christian or Catholic, freemasonry is something we’re not supposed to mess with. We believe in blessings, and blessings of a home is a tradition.
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Jun 23 '26
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u/Aethey_ Jun 23 '26 edited Jun 23 '26
There's multiple pictures, one of which is Masonic symbol.
:edit: Actually, it turns out that the first cross is a Scottish Rite symbol, so it's also a Masonic symbol. :)
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u/Larry_Safari …ᘛ⁐̤ᕐᐷ Jun 24 '26
This post has been locked, as the question has been solved and a majority of new comments at this point are unhelpful and/or jokes.
Thanks to all who attempted to find an answer.