Project Overview
The Masonic Village at Elizabethtown was founded in 1910 by the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania as a charitable home for aging Freemasons and their families. Today, the 1,400-acre Lancaster County campus has grown into one of the largest retirement communities in the United States, offering independent living cottages, apartments, and healthcare services, while preserving the historic architecture that defines the Village.
The Challenge
When Masonic Village began expanding the campus in 2008, the development team sought to maintain the architectural character of the historic stone buildings constructed on the property more than a century earlier. Those original structures featured large-format, quarried sandstone with deep greens and natural earth tones that had become part of the campus’ visual identity.
However, the new buildings would not be constructed using traditional full-depth stone. Instead, as modern wood-frame structures with manufactured thin stone veneer. The challenge was to create a manufactured stone replicating the sheer scale, texture, and color depth of the original historic sandstone while performing efficiently within contemporary construction methods.
The Solution
For this challenge, our R&D began working from the ground up to design a stone veneer specifically for the campus expansion. The result was the creation of a new large-format stone profile we called Cobble Sandstone, developed to replicate the scale and texture of the historic stone used throughout Masonic Village. A custom color recipe was designed to capture the deep green and native sandstone tones found in the original buildings, we named Masonic.
Our Masonic Cobble Sandstone became the defining stone veneer used on the expansion and would remain part of the campus architecture for years to come.
Phase One – Sycamore Apartments (2008)
Quality Stone Veneer partnered with Wagman Construction on the development of the Sycamore North and South Apartments, which introduced 126 retirement living apartments to the campus. The two three-story buildings utilized the newly developed Cobble Sandstone veneer, for a seamless architectural transition between historic and new construction.
Phase Two – Sycamore Townhomes Expansion (2017)
Nearly a decade later, the campus expanded again with the construction of 72 independent living townhomes directly across from the Sycamore Apartments. For this phase, QSV worked with long-time partners Warfel Construction and again RLPS Architects to continue the architectural vision established during the earlier development.
Using our Masonic Cobble Sandstone originally developed in 2008, the cottages were designed to complement both the Sycamore apartment buildings and the historic stone structures located just up the hill, maintaining visual continuity across the campus.
The Result
Across both phases of development, nearly 200 residences were added to the Masonic Village community while preserving the timeless character of the campus. By developing a custom large-format manufactured stone veneer that replicated the scale and color complexity of historic sandstone, Quality Stone Veneer helped bridge century-old architecture with modern building methods, ensuring the expansion remained true to the Village’s historic identity.
