The Willowbrook Ballroom is often cited as the last place Resurrection Mary danced before her death. Her ghost is said to appear at the ballroom at times, dancing with the patrons.[1]
On Friday October 28, 2016 the Ballroom was gutted by a fire. The building was having work done on the roof where the fire was suspected of starting. Due to water pressure issues the fire department had to wait on tanker trucks, which caused a delay in getting the fire under control.[2]
History
Founded in 1921 by John Verderbar, an industrious Austrian immigrant. Verderbar purchased 5 acres (20,000m2) along wooded Archer Ave. He planned to build a peaceful weekend home.
His son, Rudy Verderbar, was one of the throngs of young people who danced at the nearly 400 ballrooms and dance halls that thrived in the Chicago area during the mid-to-late 1910s. After dancing in an outdoor pavilion in Michigan, Rudy waged a relentless campaign to scrap the idea of a summer home and build an outdoor dance pavilion. After some research, his father agreed, and in 1921, the all wooden Oh Henry Park was built. It proved so popular, in 1923, the open-air pavilion was enlarged and a new 10-cents-a-dance policy was implemented. The ballroom was supposedly named after the Oh Henry candy bar, manufactured in Chicago by the Williamson Candy Company, who paid Verderbar for the naming rights.[1]
In 1930, the pavilion was destroyed in a devastating fire. Verderbar quickly assembled a team of 200 carpenters to construct an enormous outdoor dance floor in time for the next Saturday night. The remaining ten weeks of Oh Henry’s 1930 dance season drew even bigger crowds due to massive publicity touting the romantic aspects of "dancing under the stars."
Count Basie played Willowbrook Ballroom in the 1940s.
On May 3, 1931, more than 1,700 invited guests and dignitaries danced the first dances in the new Oh Henry Ballroom. It had been built at the then-staggering Great Depression-era cost of $100,000.
As Big Band fever spread throughout 1940s America, the Oh Henry Ballroom, now with air conditioning, became a major force in the Midwest’s entertainment industry. Even during the Second World War, typical weekly attendance was about 10,000 dancers. The ballroom’s popularity was reason for Chicago bus lines to be rerouted to provide direct service to and from the ballroom.[citation needed]
In 1955, as ballrooms across the country scaled down or closed, the Verderbars set out on a course to further expand their operations. A 20,000-foot (6,100m) addition installed new kitchens, a restaurant and a private room for parties and banquets.
In 1959 the entire Oh Henry complex was renamed Willowbrook Ballroom. The 1960s were bringing record crowds to the ballroom, but toward the end of that decade, the public’s taste in entertainment underwent a radical change and fewer people took up ballroom dancing.
Willowbrook Ballroom survived by having contemporary bands share the stage on the same evening with the top ballroom bands.
In 1997 the Verderbar family sold the Ballroom to Birute and Gediminas Jodwalis.[1] The Willowbrook Ballroom is located at 8900 Archer Avenue, Willow Springs, Illinois, 60480.[4]
In 2000 The Willowbrook Ballroom was profiled as one of America's "Glorious, Historic, Legendary, Treasured Ballroom Dance Floors" in Amateur Dancers magazine.[5] Criteria for being profiled as an Amateur Dancers magazine's "Finest Floor" is:
A minimum of 3,500 square feet (330m2) of danceable wood flooring, sprung preferred.
Sufficient room for 300 or more dancers.
Adequate sound and heating/cooling system.
Currently operating with a 25-year history or more.
On October 28, 2016 the Willowbrook Ballroom was again destroyed by a massive, multi-alarm fire.[6]
As of early Spring 2017 the Dance of Life Foundation—a Burr Ridge-based nonprofit organization—claims to have raised nearly $2 million to rebuild the historic ballroom.[7]
On Feb. 25, 2019 Crain's Chicago Business reported that suburban construction firm Westpoint Builders had purchased, on Feb. 13, 2019, half of the Willowbrook Ballroom site for 1.25 million dollars. When finished, the new construction on the site is said to include 168 condominiums and 42 townhomes. As of Oct. 28, 2021 there has been no announcement about the sale of the other half of the property, and the property as a whole is now apartments as of June 25th, 2023.
The Savoy Ballroom was a large ballroom for music and public dancing located at 596 Lenox Avenue, between 140th and 141st Streets in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. Lenox Avenue was the main thoroughfare through upper Harlem. Poet Langston Hughes calls it the "Heartbeat of Harlem" in Juke Box Love Song, and he set his work "Lenox Avenue: Midnight" on the legendary street. The Savoy was one of many Harlem hot spots along Lenox, but it was the one to be called the "World's Finest Ballroom". It was in operation from March 12, 1926, to July 10, 1958, and as Barbara Englebrecht writes in her article "Swinging at the Savoy", it was "a building, a geographic place, a ballroom, and the 'soul' of a neighborhood". It was opened and owned by white entrepreneur Jay Faggen and Jewish businessman Moe Gale. It was managed by African-American businessman and civic leader Charles Buchanan. Buchanan, who was born in the British West Indies, sought to run a "luxury ballroom to accommodate the many thousands who wished to dance in an atmosphere of tasteful refinement, rather than in the small stuffy halls and the foul smelling, smoke laden cellar nightclubs ..."
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A ballroom or ballhall is a large room inside a building, the primary purpose of which is holding large formal parties called balls. Traditionally, most balls were held in private residences; many mansions and palaces, especially historic mansions and palaces, contain one or more ballrooms. In other large houses, a large room such as the main drawing room, long gallery, or hall may double as a ballroom, but a good ballroom should have the right type of flooring, such as hardwood flooring or stone flooring .. For most styles of modern dance, a wooden sprung floor offers the best surface.
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References
O'Hara, Delia, "Seeing is believing - Willowbrook Ballroom will be forever linked to the ghost called 'Resurrection Mary'", Chicago Sun-Times, October 26, 2003.
Stanley, Charles, "Old Family Ballroom Far from Seeing Its Last Dance", Chicago Tribune, December 27, 1996.
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