A fact from Oddfellows' Hall, Chester appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 18 November 2011 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that when Lady Mary Calverley built Oddfellows' Hall(pictured) in Chester, England in 1676, she was fined £20 because it caused the loss of a portion of the Chester Rows?
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Latest comment: 13 years ago5 comments4 people in discussion
I enjoyed reading the article but I wonder whether the apostrophe is really necessary? As far as I can see, the building is usually referred to as Oddfellows Hall without the apostrophe, as are other Oddfellows buildings in Britain. If the inscription you cite has no apostrophe, and the restaurant/pub is advertised without one here, then I see no reason to add one for Wikipedia. - Ipigott (talk) 07:41, 18 November 2011 (UTC)Reply
I don't think there is a consistent answer. I took the apostrophe from the Chester Civic Trust book, but the National Heritage List for England, and Pevsner omit it. The article Apostrophe gives no clear direction. The disambig page Odd Fellows Hall has a mixture with and without. Does anyone have an authoritative answer? Is there one? --Peter I. Vardy (talk) 11:34, 18 November 2011 (UTC)Reply
For names of buildings, rather than try to establish a grammatical rule, I think the most sensible approach is to use the form most frequently used locally. It seems to me that the variant without the apostrophe is much more usual in this case and I would therefore drop it from the title of the article. - Ipigott (talk) 15:07, 18 November 2011 (UTC)Reply
I'm not sure there can ever be an "authorative" answer, as it depends on whether you consider "Oddfellows" to be a modifier of "Hall" or the owner of the hall. On balance I favour "Oddfellows Hall", as the hall's name carries no indication of ownership. It may simply be a hall once used by the Oddfellows, for instance. It's perhaps easier to see with "Oddfellows Guild", where an apostrophe would mean "guild belonging to the Oddfellows", which doesn't seem quite right to me. I think as well that there's a tendency to think an apostrophe is needed just because "Oddfellows" ends with an "s", as we're not tempted to write "Bridge's House", for instance. MalleusFatuorum15:24, 18 November 2011 (UTC)Reply
