The working Benevolent State Grand Lodge of South Carolina was a health, welfare, and burial benefit society for African Americans in South Carolina. The Lodge designed, built, and financed this building in 1922 to serve as its headquarters and administrative offices and to attract black business people to Greenville by providing office space for their businesses.
The building has provided office space for many of Greenville's African American doctors, lawyers, dentists, insurance firms, a newspaper, and Greenville's first black mortuary. During the 1960s, the temple was used for meeting space for local organizers of the Civil Rights Movement.
