Thread by @100YearsAgoNews

March 12, 1926: The Savoy Ballroom opens on Lenox Ave. in Manhattan, “dedicated exclusively to Colored People.” The nightspot that Langston Hughes will come to call the “Heartbeat of Harlem” is luxurious and spacious, a step up from so many smoky, cramped dance halls. 1/6

Owned by two white men but managed by a Black man, Charles Buchanan, the Savoy is one of the first racially integrated entertainment venues in New York. Admission is 50¢ weekdays, 75¢ weekends. The decor is pink, the chandelier is enormous and the dance floor is a block long. 2/6

The Savoy owes its reputation as an innovator of dance to bouncer Herbert “Whitey” White, who forms a troupe in the 1930s called the Lindy Hoppers. They popularize the Lindy Hop, named for Charles Lindbergh, with moves that grow increasingly acrobatic and gravity-defying. 3/6

Other Savoy creations, according to historian Jacqui Malone, include the “flying Charleston, the Big Apple, the stomp, the jitterbug jive, the snakehips, the rhumboogie, variations of the shimmy and the peabody, and new interpretations of the bunny hug and the turkey trot.” 4/6

The “Battle of the Bands” is said to have been invented at the swing-era Savoy, where its house band led by Chick Webb will take on all comers—Benny Goodman and Count Basie among the challengers. Louis Armstrong, Billie Holliday and Ella Fitzgerald are frequest guests. 5/6

The Savoy goes out of business in 1958, a victim of changing tastes and the vogue for “slum clearance.” It is demolished to make room for a housing project the following year. 6/6