IOOF Building (Adelaide) - 11-13 Flinders Street

11-13 Flinders Street

The first "Headquarters" of the Grand Lodge of South Australia of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF) was located in Flinders Street, just east of Victoria Square, in the Adelaide city centre.

It was a narrow 2 storey building of unremarkable external appearance. Upstairs was the Grand Lodge's meeting room, with an impressive polished jarrah floor, and was accessed by an imposing jarrah staircase. Downstairs were the offices of the Grand Lodge.

At the time, the Grand Lodge of South Australia ran a number of businesses supporting the aims of a fraternal organisation and friendly society providing services for its members:

• The major business was a non-profit voluntary health insurance fund for Lodge members and their families; this was before the days of the Australian version of Medicare when there was no compulsory universal health insurance. The Grand Lodge ran NHSA Branch No.2 (National Health Services Association).
• Sick and Funeral Fund - an insurance fund which paid benefits to contributors (or their beneficiaries) on production of evidence of sickness or death.
• Funeral Benefit Fund
• Endowment Assurance Fund - a type of maturing investment popular at the time.
• The Lodge was also associated with the FSMA (Friendly Societies' Medical Association, now trading as "National Pharmacies") which ran (and still does run) a chain of Chemist shops (pharmacies), mainly in the Adelaide metropolitan area, but also in a number of South Australia's regional centres, and recently, interstate.

In the 1960s, the Reserve Bank of Australia decided to build a new South Australian office on the corner of Flinders Street and Victoria Square, on land occupied by the buildings at 1-9 Flinders Street, and also on the lane between 9 & 11 Flinders Street. The IOOF Building was acquired by the Reserve Bank, the building was demolished, and the site turned into a lane.

The Grand Lodge moved to the basement of "Bowmans Building" in King William Street, purchased land at 47 Gawler Place, and commenced construction of a new office building. The new building was not to contain a Lodge meeting room; a much larger ex-Freemasons' meeting room in Castle Street, Parkside was purchased, renovated, and became the new meeting room of the Grand Lodge of South Australia.