Allston losing a mystical temple, but gaining four apartments

The Zoning Board of Appeal today approved plans by landlord City Realty to convert the former local home of the Ancient Mystical Order of the Rosy Cross - the Rosicrucians - at 13 Clevemont Ave., off Everett Street in Allston, into four apartments.

The Johannes Kelpius Lodge of AMORC has held meetings and discussions about the mystical underpinnings of the universe at the location since its founding in the 1980s - when it was granted the one-time home of the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran St. John's Church by the Rosicrucian AMORC Temple of Boston. That group in turn purchased the property for $1 in 1976, according to Suffolk County Registry of Deeds records.

The lodge is named after a Transylvanian pietist who led 40 other priests to Philadelphia, located on the 40th degree of latitude, where they built a lodge measuring 40 feet by 40 feet in the late 1600s. And then he dug a cave in a hillside, possibly to await the destruction of the earth he predicted for 1694. After the world did not end, he fell ill, eventually dying of tuberculosis in 1708, age 35. Although his writings indicate he was not a Rosicrucian, American Rosicrucians today insist he was.

City Realty won approval to add a roughly 15x19 rear addition and shed dormers on either side of the building's attic, as well as reconfiguring the front porch to provide additional light and air for living space in the basement. Under the company's plans, the basement and first floor - which now has a meeting room for discourse on the nature of life and stuff - will be turned into a 2-bedroom unit, next to a separate 2-bedroom apartment. The top two floors will each have a three-bedroom apartment.

The building will have no parking. City Realty's attorney, George Morancy, said there's no possible way to add parking to the small lot, which is near at least two bus lines.