when did lodges stop using public houses and taverns for their regular meetings

The shift away from meeting in public houses and taverns occurred gradually throughout the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as purpose-built halls and temples were erected 1. The move toward dedicated buildings began in earnest after the Grand Lodge of England dedicated Freemasons Hall in London in 1776, prompting local lodges across Britain, Europe, and the Americas to build separate halls wherever funds permitted 1.

In the United States, lodges regularly met in taverns until well into the nineteenth century; Boston, for example, did not build its first independent Masonic Temple until 1832 1. In Scotland, individual lodges continued using taverns and hotels deep into the nineteenth century; the Lodge of Edinburgh (Mary's Chapel) held communications in various Edinburgh hotels and taverns through at least 1869 2. This reliance on public houses persisted despite early eighteenth-century regulations aimed at distancing the Craft from publicans, such as the Lodge of York's 1725 prohibition on admitting publicans and the Scottish Grand Lodge's 1739 resolution barring them from serving as Grand Stewards 2.