The Pride of Fairfax Lodge #298 building, formerly known as the Mount Vernon Enterprise Lodge No. 3488, is located in Gum Springs, established in 1833 and the oldest historically African American community of Fairfax County. Built in 1944, the two-and-a-half story vernacular frame building housed the various activities of two fraternities, the Mount Vernon Enterprise Lodge No. 3488, a fraternal order of the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows, and the Pride of Fairfax County Lodge #298, a chapter of the Prince Hall Masons in Virginia. The lodge building, currently clad with vinyl siding, has a simple rectangular massing, capped by a front-gabled roof with boxed eaves. Its interior consists of meeting spaces on the first and second floors, a kitchen, offices, storage areas, as well as a brick chimney that pierces the roof. Similarly to fraternal halls in other African American communities of Virginia during segregation, Pride of Fairfax County Lodge #298 became the center of social life in Gum Springs. From the 1940s into the 1980s, community and fraternity members and their families accessed support, education, and mentoring programs at the lodge hall. Most importantly, the lodge housed the first headquarters of the Saunders B. Moon Community Action Association, an agency founded in 1965 to combat poverty in Gum Springs. The association, with members from both fraternal organizations, was established under the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 and became one of the first local agencies to receive federal funding under President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society program. The Mount Vernon Enterprise Lodge No. 3488 ceased activities in the late 1990s and, in 1998, ownership of the property transferred to the Pride of Fairfax County Lodge #298. It continues to use the building as a fraternal hall and community resource center in Gum Springs.
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Abbreviations:
VLR: Virginia Landmarks Register
NPS: National Park Service
NRHP: National Register of Historic Places
NHL: National Historic Landmark
Programs
DHR has secured permanent legal protection for over 700 historic places - including 15,000 acres of battlefield lands
DHR has erected 2,532 highway markers in every county and city across Virginia
DHR has registered more than 3,317 individual resources and 613 historic districts
DHR has engaged over 450 students in 3 highway marker contests
DHR has stimulated more than $4.2 billion dollars in private investments related to historic tax credit incentives, revitalizing communities of all sizes throughout Virginia