Browning Masonic Community

This location was selected in 1936 for a Memorial Home for aged Masons in accordance with the wishes of Otis Avery Browning, a prominent Toledo businessman, book publisher, civic leader, and Mason, who set forth plans for the home in a will he prepared in 1922 creating a trust for the Otis Avery Browning Masonic Memorial Fund. Browning wrote that one of the chief purposes of his will was to help provide for the erection and maintenance of a home for aged people where they could be properly cared for with all modern comforts. His will required that the funds be invested for fifty years after his death in 1923, and the memorial fund grew until 1979, when ground was broken here for construction of a Memorial Home for Master Masons, their wives, and their widows. The formal dedication took place on July 26, 1981, and the first residents moved into the home in October 1981.

Waterville, Ohio · United States