Juner slipped into his old temple in the middle of the night.

He used to sneak in by coming down the I-beam, toward the church area. The Masonic Temple had been abandoned for all of his lifetime, and his parents’ as well. The roof leaked. The walls were covered with graffiti. The floors — well, in most places, there were no floors.

This time, he walked onto the marble floors of a lobby under construction. The graffiti artist was met by workers from Sage Hospitality, who gave him paint, equipment — and official sanction. And paid him for his time.

Years ago, Juner had made his name on the local graffiti scene by lowering himself six stories onto a ledge on the outside of the building to paint perhaps the most famous piece of graffiti art in Providence’s history, the huge white words “Temple of Junerism” on the building’s north face. The phrase greeted passing motorists on Route 95.

Now Juner was being asked to help christen his old temple, as it starts its new life as a luxury hotel. Less than a month ago, under the cover of the night, Juner and an assistant swept into Providence long enough to paint the word “Temple” on the wall of the hotel’s restaurant, and then took off in their van.

“Nobody knew,” said Christian Reeve, the chief engineer on the restoration project who orchestrated Juner’s visit. “I gave them a late-night tour.”

On Thursday, in an opening that historic preservationists call unique in America, the long-neglected temple is scheduled to open as the Renaissance Providence Hotel.

On its face, the story almost sounds ridiculous: an 80-year-old, never-completed Masonic Temple, prominently sited next to the State House, transformed into a luxury hotel. But the Masonic Temple has always had an air of the unreal.

Ever since workers walked off the job on June 28, 1928, the structure has been one of Providence’s great landmarks, as much for its stately appearance as for its status as the ultimate white elephant.

The temple has barely escaped demolition on numerous occasions — usually for lack of money — and has been the subject of all manner of odd restoration schemes.

Now, after three years of reconstruction work, the developer is consciously dotting every ghostly I and crossing every superstitious T, paying homage to the building’s long history as it prepares to open the 272-room, $100-million-plus hotel.

Sage Hospitality, based in Denver, has invited the Masons, who commissioned the temple in 1926 as a grand meeting hall, to be a part of the building’s rebirth.

After a ceremonious groundbreaking and a good start to construction, the Masons ran out of money to complete the then-$2.5-million project, and workers walked off the job in 1928, never to return.

Eighty years later, the Masons have given the new hotel their blessing. Carl Willi, Rhode Island’s Grand Master Mason, was to be the hotel’s first guest when the opening was scheduled for last Thursday. Now that it has been postponed to this Thursday, his successor, Steve Smith, will be the first.

To some Masons, like Willi, the opening is exorcising some ghosts for the Masons.

“None of us even talked about making overtures to be part of this,” said Willi, who added that they appreciate the invitation. “We had walked away from the building many, many years ago; to me it seemed kind of bullish to come back and say we want to be involved.”

WHEN GROUND was broken on Nov. 11, 1926, the Masonic Fraternity of Rhode Island planned a three-building complex — the temple wing, a large auditorium and a pie-shaped connector between the two buildings that would house offices. Construction halted in 1928 when it was discovered that the Masons had raised only half of the money needed for the project. Rumors flew about someone in the lodge leadership running off with money.

Indeed, in 1933, Journal archives show that Fredrick I. Dana, treasurer of the Scottish Rite Trust for Rhode Island, was sentenced to 18 months in prison on two counts of embezzlement, for a total of $21,000. Officials were quoted as saying that they would have charged him with roughly $75,000 more if it were not for the statute of limitations.

It’s not clear whether that was connected with the project’s failure. The top Masons said at the time that members had simply overpromised how much they could contribute, and underestimated the size of the project.

Even today’s Masonic leadership said they had never known whether the stories of embezzlement were real.

“There’s always been rumors, everyone always assumed, but I had never known whether they were true before,” Willi said when told of the old newspaper clippings.

After the Masons walked away, the complex was completely abandoned until 1944, when voters authorized buying it for $754,000 and converting it to state offices.

The state completed the auditorium section, which opened as Veterans Memorial Auditorium in 1950 with a performance of Beethoven’s “The Consecration of the House” by the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

But no money could be found to complete the temple wing, which became more burdensome as time went on. A study done in the 1960s said that the building “invariably induced deep despair” in anyone assigned to find a use for it, and recommended getting rid of it once and for all. Predictably, there was no money in the state budget for demolition.

As Providence changed all around it, the temple remained — at once beautiful and depressing. When Route 95 cut the city in half, when the rail yards were moved and the rivers uncovered and Providence Place mall built, there stood the unfinished temple.

As the years passed, the building became the subject of several outlandish schemes.

Starting in 1966, a Cranston state senator, Raymond M. Durfee, spent 15 years trying to turn the space into a television studio, imagining that the large auditorium, meeting room, and underground chamber would be perfect for staging soap operas and commercials.

A 1991 state report suggested that the temple could be an enormous boiler room for a heating system that would power and heat all of Capital Center.

And in 1993, the University of Rhode Island started talking up the Temple as the future site of its college of continuing education.

Soon, more realistic development proposals began to emerge. Providence was starting its boom, and as the structures that had long sat around it were one-by-one removed and replaced, the neglected temple property stood out as an attractive spot for private development

In 1993, the temple complex had been added to the National Register of Historic Places, and in 1995, the Providence Preservation Society released its top 10 list of the most endangered sites in Providence, headlined by the temple. The Society also held a charette the next year to draw attention to the building.

Following that, in 1997, Gov. Lincoln C. Almond got involved, issuing a nationwide call to potential developers. A hotel project was put forward, by Algen Construction Co. of New Rochelle, N.Y.

The company proposed erecting a 16-story glass tower rising out of the temple, a design that inspired raised eyebrows from observers confused by the stark contrast between the traditional temple and the ultra-modern expansion. There was some support for the plan, but ultimately, the Capital Center Commission rejected the tower design, and Algen backed out because it was unable to secure financing.

It was replaced by Sage in 2002, which has brought a trimmed-down version of Algen’s proposal to the finish line.

After Sage broke ground in April 2004, the transformation took place — mostly inside the 80-year-old temple walls. Workers excavated three floors below ground level; they erected scaffolding, to hold in place the original brick and limestone exterior walls, and built a steel-reinforced structure inside.

The original facade on three sides of the building was reattached to the new interior structure. The fourth wall — facing the Veterans Memorial Auditorium to the west — had been lost in an earlier demolition attempt. The limestone columns were preserved and the walls scrubbed clean.

While it might have been easier to demolish the building, Sage’s financing relied upon historic tax credits that required saving the façade. The developer will receive $13 million in federal historic tax credits and $18 million in state historic tax credits.

To Providence Preservation Society executive director Jack Gold, the temple is the ultimate example of historic preservation, and must be unique — where else in America has a building sat half complete for 80 years, only to be turned into a top-of-the-line hotel?

“Can you imagine a luxury hotel here? This area used to be such an eyesore,” he said.

Now, it seems like it never could have been anything but this hotel. The inside is sumptuous and regal, with marble and deep colors throughout. The rooms seem long and thin, because the temple’s windows are closely spaced.

There are conference spaces named for famous composers who were also Masons. A grand ballroom built underneath the Veterans Memorial Auditorium is insulated by 4 inches of concrete so that a wedding or Bar Mitzvah doesn’t disturb a concert upstairs.

On the inside facing of the temple walls, there is still graffiti from the days when the temple was a regional mecca for graffiti artists like Juner to try and top and impress one another. The art is gone, plastered over and hidden forever. But before the site became a hotel, some of those working on the project decided that Juner had to give the temple his blessing.

It wasn’t easy finding Juner, said Reeve, the chief engineer. Reeve has long dabbled in the graffiti scene, and used his contacts to track down the elusive artist, who does not live in Providence.

One day, he got a phone call that Juner would be willing to come to Providence for one night, and paint in his old temple.

“We tracked him down. We found Juner,” Reeve said in disbelief.

On the arranged night, Reeve waited out in the chilly air. Then a van pulled up, and two men got out. One of them identified himself as the artist. Paint, equipment, and lighting were waiting for them, Reeve said, and they quickly got to work.

Juner painted the word temple in the hotel’s restaurant, signed it with his personal tag, and was gone before dawn.

And what did Juner think of the building, almost completely rebuilt from the majestic eyesore that he knew? “I think he liked it,” Reeve said.

dbarbari@projo.com