The Manhattan Casino's Fifty Years
Near St Petersburg, Florida
On a street in South St. Petersburg that white Tampa barely knew existed, Elder Jordan built a two-story dance hall in nineteen twenty-five. He called it the Jordan Dance Hall at first, later the Manhattan Casino. For the next twenty-five years, it was the most important music venue in the Tampa Bay region, for a specific reason: it was one of the very few venues in the area where Black musicians could perform to an audience that welcomed them.
The Chitlin' Circuit was the informal network of clubs, ballrooms, and theaters across the American South and Midwest where Black performers could work during the years of segregation. White-owned venues in most Southern cities were closed to Black artists, or required them to enter through back doors, stay in separate facilities, and perform for white audiences only. The Chitlin' Circuit was the alternative economy that Black music built inside the wall.
The Manhattan Casino was St. Petersburg's anchor on that circuit. Between nineteen thirty-nine and nineteen sixty-four, it hosted an extraordinary roster: Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Ray Charles, James Brown, Count Basie, B.B. King, Etta James, Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, Little Richard, Dinah Washington, Bo Diddley. These were not local or regional acts. These were the artists whose records were changing American music, playing in a twelve-thousand-square-foot dance hall in South St. Pete because it was one of the places they were allowed to play.
The Casino also provided something unusual for its time: mixed-race audiences. Major artists like Armstrong and Basie consistently drew white listeners who crossed the color line to hear them. The Manhattan Casino was one of the few venues in segregated St. Petersburg where that crossing happened regularly.
The building closed in twenty twenty-two for renovation and is scheduled to reopen in twenty twenty-six as a conference and event space. The question of what it will tell visitors about what happened inside its walls during those twenty-five years has not yet been fully answered.
