The story of Zetland Hall is really three stories in one. The first building — a modest structure affectionately known as The Bungalow — served as the Freemasons' original meeting place in Hong Kong, occupying Inland Lot 34 in the colony's earliest years. The second, a grander hall built in 1865 and designed by Surveyor-General Charles St George Cleverly (who also drew up Government House), stood at the corner of Zetland Street and Ice House Street. It took its name from Zetland Lodge No. 525, which was itself named for Thomas Dundas, 2nd Earl of Zetland, Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England from 1844 to 1870. That second hall survived nearly eight decades until an American air raid in 1944, during the Japanese occupation, leveled it. Where the building once stood, a Hong Kong Electric substation now hums quietly.

In the meeting of July 7, 1947 — barely two years after the occupation ended — the Zetland Hall Trustees moved quickly. They sold the ruins of the old site to Hong Kong Electric for HK$900,000 and bought a separate property, Inland Lot 1875, which had housed a hotel called St. George's House, for HK$125,000. The architect firm Leigh and Orange was commissioned to design new premises. On April 2, 1949, the foundation stone of the new lodge was laid by two District Grand Masters — one for the English Constitution, one for the Scottish — in a ceremony that signaled the Masonic community's determination to rebuild its presence in the city. That five-story building, at 1 Kennedy Road in Mid-Levels, has served as headquarters ever since. The 1949 legislation that ratified the new arrangements also expanded trustee representation to include Irish Constitution lodges and lodges displaced by the closure of foreign concessions in China.

Today, twenty lodges meeting under the English Constitution gather at Zetland Hall, from the oldest — Royal Sussex Lodge No. 501 and Perseverance Lodge of Hong Kong No. 1165 — to two established in 2024 and 2025 with lodge numbers exceeding 10,000, a first for the region. The St. Joseph's and La Salle Lodge No. 10050, admitted in June 2024, draws mainly from alumni and parents of La Salle Brothers schools in Hong Kong. The Diocesan Schools Lodge No. 10055, welcomed in January 2025, follows a similar model through Anglican Church schools. These newest lodges suggest that the fraternal tradition, rather than fading, is finding new generations of members. The building's basement kitchen, ground-floor bar and banquet hall, and upper-floor meeting rooms and library with over a thousand Masonic books serve a community that includes visiting Freemasons from across the world passing through Hong Kong.

Perhaps the most unexpected chapter in Zetland Hall's history involves nineteen stained glass windows that once belonged to Béthanie, the French Mission chapel in Pokfulam. When the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts began restoring Béthanie, project director Philip Soden discovered that all nineteen original windows had vanished. His search led, eventually, to Zetland Hall — where seven of the windows had been installed in the dining room during a 1998 renovation, and to a government warehouse where two more sat in storage. Investigation confirmed that an architect had found the batch of windows near Béthanie in 1985 and, recognizing their age, had placed them in government care; thirteen years later, needing stained glass for the lodge's renovation, he retrieved seven to use on site. Bruce Humphrey, then chairman of the Zetland Hall Trustee, agreed to return all seven. Together with the two from the warehouse, nine windows went back to the chapel. The Academy recreated the remaining ten from historical photographs. All nineteen windows now fill Béthanie again — thanks, in part, to the Freemasons' willingness to give up a beautiful accident.