UPTOWNflavor

Harlem’s notoriously famous hot spot opened on March 12, 1926. The club featured an elegant lobby with a marble staircase leading upstairs to the ballroom which was the entire length of the block. A ballroom designed with a double bandstand, one at each end of a 10,000 square foot dance floor holding an estimated 4000 dancers, allowed for alternating bands to play continuous music late into the night

Approximately 700,000 patrons visited the ballroom annually; and, consequently, the spring-loaded wooden dance floor had to be completely replaced every three years. The Savoy was appropriately nicknamed, “The home of happy feet,” and it was also known among the regular patrons as “the Track” for the elongated shape of the dance floor.

A long succession of dance fads were launched from the Savoy that swept the nation and overseas in response to ever changing music trends from dixieland, ragtime, jazz, blues, swing, stomp, boogie-woogie, bop to countless peabody, waltz, one-step, two-step and rhumba variations. Among the countless dance styles originated and developed at the Savoy were: The Flying Charleston, The Lindy Hop, The Stomp, The Big Apple, Jitterbug Jive, Peckin’, Snakehips, Rhumboogie and intricate variations of the Peabody, the Shimmy, Mambo, etc.

In 1958 the Savoy Ballroom closed its doors for good and a year later was replaced by Delano Village, now renamed Savoy Park in honor of the Savoy Ballroom. The grandiose ballroom was located between 140th and 141st Streets on Lenox Avenue.

This post is dedicated to the memory one of the last Savoy Ballroom Lindy Hoppers, Frankie Manning who died last month. He would have been 95 years old on May 26, 2009. Watch a documentary about his life on WNET.org. Celebrate his 95th birthday at the Frankie’s Birthday Celebration taking place all weekend long!

*Sources:The Palomar, Savoyplaque.org, WNET.org