The six-story-tall former Masonic Temple towers over the corner of Main and Murray. However, the interior is crumbling and the concrete walls have fallen into piles of rubble and dust. Pipes dangle from the ceiling and chandeliers rest broken on the floor.

The tax-foreclosed building will be auctioned by the county on Saturday, and on Monday afternoon it held an open house to give interested residents and investors an inside look at Binghamton history.

“From the time I was eighteen I was in this temple,” said David Glassman, deputy grand master for the Broome-Chenango District of the Freemasons. “To fix it — my god where do I start? This is disheartening. There’s no saving this building.”

The Freemasons are a fraternal organization dating back to the 14th century. While it began as an organization of craftsmen regulating masonry work, it expanded over centuries into a club for community leaders whose members included the Founding Fathers.

According to Gerald R. Smith, the Broome County Historian, the building was built in 1922 and became the second Masonic Temple in the area. It housed the Tri-Cities Opera and the Binghamton Philharmonic Orchestra. Its auditorium served as a venue for local sporting and entertainment events ranging from boxing matches to concerts until the opening of the Veterans Memorial Arena in 1973.

Since then, the building has had several different owners. According to Glassman, the Masons invested their own money and received loans from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, but were unable to pay back the loans and lost the property.

Since 2012, when the county seized the building, the property has gone through numerous owners, ending with the the Binghamton Housing Group LLC, which failed to pay property and school taxes.

According to Matthew Manasse, of Mel Manasse & Son Auctioneers, which is handling the auction, the estimated cost of repairs has been placed at $500,000. Manasse is confident that the building will sell at auction and said that the structure is solid.

“There’s a lot to being historic and the appearance to help with the sale,” Manasse said. “The properties will definitely sell.”

Some of the developers, though, expressed concerns over the costs of renovations, considering the extensive internal damage to the building.

“A half million is certainly crazy,” Glassman said. “There’s just so much rubble.”

Possible future uses of the building include student housing, private apartments or a theater, but according to Dave Hamlin, Broome County director of Real Property, nothing is definite yet.

“There are no real plans ready right now,” Hamlin said. “But, there’s an awful lot of student housing coming. You have a good solid building right now, and there’s a few proposals I heard. We could always use more senior housing, and there’s even one man who wants to turn this into a single family home.”

For the time being, though, the state of the temple remains the same. Chris Bodnarczuk, a Binghamton resident who attended the open house, said that just getting inside was exciting.

“Now I have a chance for some urban exploration,” Bodnarczuk said. “It’s too cool not to have a look at.”