Welcome To Kora Shrine
Kora Temple, an historic building in Lewiston, Maine, was built in 1909 by the Ancient Arabic Order, Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. The distinctive Moorish-inspired architecture of the temple building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.
Our Fraternity
Shriner’s support Shriner’s Hospitals for Children®. With 22 locations across the United States, Shriner’s Hospitals for Children® is dedicated to improving the lives of children by providing pediatric specialty care, innovative research, and outstanding teaching programs for medical professionals. Children up to age 18 with orthopedic conditions, burns, spinal cord injuries, and cleft lip and palate are eligible for care and receive all services in a family-centered environment, regardless of the patients’ ability to pay.
Shrine is a spin-off of Freemasonry, the oldest and largest fraternity in the world. Freemasonry teaches self-knowledge through participation in a progression of ceremonies. Members are expected to be of high moral standing and spiritual values. These values are based on integrity, kindness, honesty and fairness. Members are urged to regard the interests of the family as paramount but, importantly, Freemasonry also teaches concern for people, care for the less fortunate and help for those in need.
If you are already a Mason and would like to join Kora Shrine, you can learn how to join here.
Inside Kora Temple
Kora Temple is an historic building at 11 Sabattus Street in Lewiston, Maine. The temple was built in 1909 by the Ancient Arabic Order, Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. The temple building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975 for its distinctive Moorish-inspired architecture.
Harry Cochrane, a Maine man who decorated his first church in 1887, the same year in which he married Ida Lorena Gott of Monmouth. In an era of grand decoration, of stenciling and free-hand ornamentation of walls and ceilings, of marbleizing of plaster and wood, of gilding, and of painting murals and large in-situ oil paintings, Cochrane soon achieved regional acclaim for his work. Between 1887 and his death in 1946, he was commissioned to decorate upwards of 400 public buildings in Maine and New England, including churches, parish halls, convents, banks, and courthouses. In 1898, he won first prize in a competition to decorate the convention halls and rooms for the huge Knights Templar triennial conclave in Pittsburgh. Perhaps his most spectacular mural project would be the 1927 decoration of the Kora Temple in Lewiston.
We are indeed justly proud of noble Cochrane’s immense contribution to our Shrine home.
