The Vanity Ballroom Building is a public building located at 1024 Newport Street (at Jefferson Avenue in the Jefferson-Chalmers Historic Business District) in

Detroit Detroit ( , ) is the List of municipalities in Michigan, most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated on the bank of the Detroit River across from Windsor, Ontario. It had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 United State ...

Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...

. It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

in 1982. Although the building is recorded as the last intact ballroom of the multiple Detroit dance halls that hosted big bands in the 1930s–50s, such claims ignore the abandoned yet still standing

Grande Ballroom The Grande Ballroom ( ') is a historic live music venue located at 8952 Grand River Avenue in the Petosky-Otsego neighborhood of Detroit, Michigan. The building was designed by Detroit engineer and architect Charles N. Agree in 1928 and original ...

Grand River Avenue Grand may refer to: People with the name * Grand (surname) * Grand L. Bush (born 1955), American actor Places * Grand, Oklahoma, USA * Grand, Vosges, village and commune in France with Gallo-Roman amphitheatre * Grand County (disambiguation) ...

History

The Vanity Ballroom was designed in 1929 by

Charles N. Agree Charles Nathanial Agree (April 18, 1897 – March 10, 1982) was an American architect in Detroit, Michigan. Biography Agree moved to Detroit in 1909 at the age of 12. He opened his firm in 1917 after graduating from the Detroit Y.M.C.A. Technical ...

as a flamboyant venue in which to socialize, dance and hear music. The ballroom was a major venue for bands of the 1930s and 1940s, such as those of

Tommy Dorsey Thomas Francis Dorsey Jr. (November 19, 1905 – November 26, 1956) was an American jazz trombone, trombonist, composer, conductor and bandleader of the big band era. He was known as the "Sentimental Gentleman of Swing" because of his smooth-to ...

Jimmy Dorsey James Francis Dorsey (February 29, 1904 – June 12, 1957) was an American jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, composer and big band leader. He recorded and composed the jazz and pop standards " I'm Glad There Is You (In This World of Ordinary Peopl ...

Duke Ellington Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American Jazz piano, jazz pianist, composer, and leader of his eponymous Big band, jazz orchestra from 1924 through the rest of his life. Born and raised in Washington, D ...

Benny Goodman Benjamin David Goodman (May 30, 1909 – June 13, 1986) was an American clarinetist and bandleader, known as the "King of Swing". His orchestra did well commercially. From 1936 until the mid-1940s, Goodman led one of the most popular swing bi ...

Red Nichols Ernest Loring "Red" Nichols (May 8, 1905 – June 28, 1965) was an American jazz cornetist, composer, and jazz bandleader. He was one of the most prolific and influential jazz musicians in the late 1920s and early 1930s, appearing on over 4,000 ...

Russ Morgan Russell Morgan (April 29, 1904 – August 7, 1969) was an American big band leader and arranger during the 1930s and 1940s. He was best known for being one of the composers of the song " You're Nobody till Somebody Loves You", with Larry Stock an ...

Art Mooney Arthur Joseph Mooney (February 11, 1911 – September 9, 1993) was an American singer and bandleader. His biggest hits were " I'm Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover" and " Baby Face" in 1948 and " Nuttin' For Christmas," with Barry Gordon, in 1955. ...

Woody Herman Woodrow Charles Herman (May 16, 1913 – October 29, 1987) was an American jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roo ...

, and

Pee Wee Hunt Walter Gerhardt "Pee Wee" Hunt (May 10, 1907 – June 22, 1979) was an American jazz trombonist, vocalist, and bandleader. Hunt was born in Mount Healthy, Ohio. He developed a musical interest at an early age, as his mother, Sadie, played the b ...

. The Vanity billed itself as "Detroit's most beautiful dance rendezvous". The ballroom was closed in 1958, but reopened in 1964 for one night a week. It was eventually completely shuttered, and although it played a bit part in the

Eminem Marshall Bruce Mathers III (born October 17, 1972), known professionally as Eminem, is an American rapper, songwriter, and record producer. Regarded as one of the greatest and most influential rappers of all time, he is credited with popula ...

feature film '' 8 Mile'' in 2002, it remains closed and dilapidated.

Description

The Vanity Ballroom is a two-story building originally containing five retail shops on the first floor and a ballroom on the second. It is built in the

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first Art Deco in Paris, appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920 ...

style with an

Aztec The Aztecs ( ) were a Mesoamerican civilization that flourished in central Mexico in the Post-Classic stage, post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec people included different Indigenous peoples of Mexico, ethnic groups of central ...

Mayan Revival Mayan Revival is a modern architectural style popular in the Americas during the 1920s and 1930s that drew inspiration from the architecture and iconography of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures. History Origins Though the name of the s ...

theme and measures . Vanity Ballroom Building
from the state of Michigan It is constructed of steel and reinforced concrete and faced with brick. The bulk of the brickwork uses orange brick; this is complemented with darker brick and cast stones. There is a three-sided entrance pavilion at the corner of the structure, and the façades to either side (along both Jefferson Avenue and Newport Street) are nearly identical. These façades terminate in smaller entrance pavilions; all three pavilions are slightly taller than the rest of the façades and contain a geometric stone pattern near the top. The multi-paned windows on the second floor are flanked by pilasters and topped with Art Deco geometric designs echoing those of the Aztecs. The ballroom was built to accommodate 1,000 couples, and has a maple dance floor, a stage or bandstand, and a promenade on three sides. The dance floor was built on springs which intentionally compressed under the weight of the people who danced on it, giving the dancers a bounce as they moved. The backdrop of the stage features a scene representing

Chichen Itza Chichén Itzá , , often with the emphasis reversed in English to ; from () "at the mouth of the well of the Itza people, Itza people" (often spelled ''Chichen Itza'' in English and traditional Yucatec Maya) was a large Pre-Columbian era, ...

. Three of the retail shops on the first floor also had interiors designed by Agree; their interiors echo the Art Deco Aztec theme of the exterior. Within the retail spaces, Agree used elements such as wood and marble trim and

terrazzo Terrazzo is a composite material, poured in place or precast, which is used for floor and wall treatments. It consists of chips of marble, quartz, granite, glass, or other suitable material, poured with a cementitious binder (for chemical bind ...

floors. The exteriors of these first-floor stores have been substantially changedVanity Ballroom Building
from the city of Detroit with many of the Mayan flavored elements torn off the façade.

References

External links

at Detroiturbex.com. {{National Register of Historic Places in Michigan Commercial buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Michigan Commercial buildings completed in 1929 Music venues completed in 1929 Former music venues in the United States National Register of Historic Places in Detroit Unused buildings in Detroit Art Deco architecture in Michigan Music venues in Michigan Mayan Revival architecture Ballrooms in the United States Event venues on the National Register of Historic Places in Michigan 1929 establishments in Michigan Charles N. Agree buildings