In a metropolis where tales of gems neglected or lost to urbanization, the story of the old Elks Club Building along Manila’s Roxas Boulevard near Rizal Park is a story worth to be told and emulated in the field of what they call as “adaptive reuse” or making use of an old structure into a different purpose while maintaining its classic character.
And the story behind this edifice gets more interesting. As the name suggests, it served as the home of the Manila Elks Club, a social club and fraternal organization that is under the Elks Lodge (or formally, the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks) centrally based in Chicago. Founded in 1868, the Elks Lodge has traditionally been an exclusive club which boasted illustrious members like Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Douglas MacArthur, Frederick Funston, (the man responsible for the capture of Emilio Aguinaldo in 1901) baseball icon Mickey Mantle, and even Hollywood celebrities like Clint Eastwood and Ben Affleck.