Bagdad Supper Club

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The Bagdad Supper Club was a theater and entertainment venue located on north side of what then was U.S. Route 80, but now is Texas State Highway 180, east of Grand Prairie, Texas, at the corner of Bagdad Road and Main Street. It opened Thanksgiving Day 1928, eleven months before the Great Crash of 1929. It was an opulent palatial facility that offered dining, dancing, and music. The venue was featured in the 1947 comedy Juke Joint, starring Spencer Williams. J. Wiley Day was the inaugural managing director. The club was constructed by the Bagdad Enterprises, Inc., a Texas corporation, controlled by Eastern capital. The corporation was a subsidiary of a large Eastern company that confined itself to various theatrical lines. The architect was W. Scott Dunne (1886–1937), a well-known designer of theaters in Texas. [1]

Contents

Facilities

The building was a Moorish style, two-story building, clad in pinkish gray stucco. [2] The exterior had rounded spires, influenced by old buildings of the Moors. It was distinctively oriental in all of its features. The building was built on 4.5 acres (1.8 ha). The building was set back three hundred feet from the road and featured a horseshoe driveway to the main entry. There was a walkway leading to the entry with a large fountain in the center. When the club opened, it had a parking lot for over three hundred automobiles. The interior featured a stage, dance floor, dining rooms, and lounging rooms. The dance floor was billed as the largest in the Southwest. The main dining room had a seating capacity of 450.

Club managers and lessees

Managers
Operators
Lessees

Changes in use

Frank H. Newton, MD (1887–1977), and wife, Cosette Faust Newton, PhD (1889–1975), who at one time was Dean of Women as Southern Methodist University, acquired the club in 1945 and closed it in 1950. In September that year, All American News (Emanuel M. Glucksman, manager), a commercial film concern based in Chicago, leased the building as its southwest headquarters and used it for film and TV — commercial short subjects and trailers. They billed it as the largest sound stage east of Los Angeles. [5] In 1953, the Newtons began renovating the facility as an art center, "bringing in a lifetime of art treasures from around the world." [6] The Newton’s designed rooms devoted to the countries from whence their art objects were acquired.

Destroyed by fire

The building burned to the ground on April 19, 1953 in what was called "the most spectacular fire in western Dallas County." Artwork valued at about $1 million (at that time) was lost in the fire, which included 45 paintings of the Hungarian artist Armand Grotz, a Gainsborough and a Van Dyck. [7] Other valuable contents included furniture, Oriental furnishings — especially Japanese and Chinese — many tapestries, drapes, and scores of rugs termed priceless as they were made by hand.

The Newtons sold the 14-acre lot in 1956 for $125,000. [8]

Notable performers

See also

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References

  1. ↑ "Deaths and Funeral Notices: Dunne, William Scott," Dallas Morning News, October 22, 1937
  2. ↑ "Thanksgiving Day Opening Set for Supper Club," Dallas Morning News, September 2, 1928
  3. ↑ "No Booking Problem for Singing Pastory," by Philip Wuntch, Dallas Morning News , November 8, 1970, Sec. C, pg. 2
  4. ↑ "The Baghdad Supper Club—Grand Prairie—1928–1952," by Kim Thorn, Bingham (newsletter), Grand Prairie Historical Organization, Vol. 5, August 2006, pps. 2 and 4
  5. ↑ "All-American Studios Lease Club Bagdad," Dallas Morning News, August 15, 1950
  6. ↑ Historic Grand Prairie, an Illustrated History, by Kathy A. Goolsby, Grand Prairie Historical Organization (2008), pg. 38; OCLC   276949055, ISBN   9781893619845
  7. ↑ "Old Bagdad Club Wrecked by Fire, April 20, 1953," Dallas Morning News, April 20, 1953
  8. ↑ "Old Bagdad Club Site For Sale at $235,000," Dallas Morning News , May 20, 1956, section 4, pg. 2

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