Masters Lodge No. 5 has always attracted to its membership leaders in the social, professional and business life of its community. On the walls of the library and also in the upper corridors may be seen paintings of some of its most illustrious pioneers. One in particular is that of William Van Rensselaer, the last of the Patroons and Master of Masters Lodge in 1790-91 and Grand Master of the State of New York from 1827 to and including 1829. His was a most impressive record in the City of Albany and the State of New York. His portrait hangs in the Masonic Temple library.

Although Van Renssealer was born in New York in 1764, and attended Harvard University, he spent much of his life in Albany where he took an active role in the management of his property which included most of the present counties of Albany and Rensselaer. At the time of his death in 1839,
he was also a major in the militia.

He was elected, as a Federalist, to the State Legislature where he served from 1789 to 1795. He served as Lieutenant-Governor of the State under Governor John Hay. In 1810, he was appointed to the commission which selected the site for the Erie Canal. During the construction years, he was very involved with the project.
In the War of 1812 he commanded the New York militia in the Queenstown campaign, which began well but ended ingloriously. In 1819, he was made a regent of the State University and was its Chancellor for four years. Many of his accomplishments have been forgotten. However, there is one institution in the Albany area which will keep his name alive forever. It is the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, which he founded in 1824 and incorporated in 1826. From this engineering institution have graduated men who have become world-famous in the fields of chemistry, metallurgy, electricity and other affiliated scientific areas. Their collective accomplishments have added greatly to the sum of human happiness.

Mr. Van Rensselaer served as a member of Congress from 1823 to 1829, and was responsible for the publication of many books about the Erie Canal. One in particular, “A Geological and Agricultural Survey of the District Adjoining the Erie Canal,” aroused enough interest that this tremendous project, for those days, was assured of success. He was also among the first invited guests to make the perilous trip on the “DeWitt Clinton,” which was the first commercially successful passenger train in America, and which became the nucleus of the New York Central Rail system.

It is also interesting to note that Freemasonry played a prominent role in the Revolutionary War, which was almost a uniquely Masonic enterprise. The Boston Tea Party was organized in St. Andrew's Lodge, and every member of the group which threw the tea into the harbor was a member of that lodge. Paul Revere was the Junior Warden of St. Andrew’s at that time. More then 50 of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence were members of the Masonic fraternity and three lodges in Albany; Mt. Vernon #3, warranted in 1765; Masters # 5, in 1768, and Temple #14, in 1796, had the honor of being prominent in the development of Albany during the time of the Revolutionary War.