Save The Palladium Building at Grand Center

07/10/2024

2 years ago

07/14/2022

Lookout! There’s a vicious and shameful appetite for destruction in Grand Center.

07/11/2022

July 10 - 11, 2022

07/10/2022

On the nightclub circuit with the Cotton Club in Harlem, The St Louis Club Plantation was the place for a number of important historical events in swing music during the War years.
And it was only because of the grassroots effort by the music and dance culture of the city that the building was placed on the National Trust's list of endangered historic landmarks.
Yet, it was left to rot as the mayors, Grand Center Inc., and city leaders never recognized it and never helped preserve it.
This interest in our heritage is greater than a merely a revival of old jazz, blues and swing music - it's a new understanding of our city’s character and a new approach to the preservation of our long overlooked music and arts legacy.
For too long we've wrongly trusted policy makers to take proper care of our cultural heritage. And that's certainly one of the reasons why our city's incredible music history is not widely known.
Demolition of the building began today.

02/02/2022

The city had a tool, the “demolition by neglect” ordinance to try to avert this outcome. Why didn’t the city use it?

The demolition by neglect on the block of 7200 S Broadway continues unabated. Here some recent photos. Greg Johnson wrote a wonderful piece about he block in 2017. Nextstl 2017- Carondelet’s Historic Watkins Block Threatened Nextstl 2014- Entire Block of South Broadway in the Patch to See Rehab? (...

01/10/2022

Demolition by neglect hearings aren’t “ little used” they’re never used.
In 2014, the week this rule was created, the CRO told us there was nothing they could do to preserve the Palladium building.
director Meg Lousteau
Tishaura Jones

Funding, not legal authority, has been the real issue preventing a stronger response from City Hall when owners fail to maintain historic properties.

01/17/2020

A friend reports that it appears that the Palladium/Club Plantation building roof is collapsing.

08/25/2019

OTD in 1937 Floyd Smith with the Jeter-Pillars St. Louis Club Plantation outfit put the first electric guitar solo on a record.

08/07/2019

Only ten over 100 years old remain.

06/22/2019

Elliott Davis FOX 2 recently posted a video of the Nicholas Brothers from the 1940s. If you wanted to see them in person in St. Louis back then, you went to the Club Plantation.

04/15/2019

OTD at the historic Palladium building

OTD, 1962, Fontella Bass made her first recordings in the Bobbin records studio in the historic Palladium building in Grand Center.

02/22/2019

A little ❤️ for the neglected Palladium building from the St Louis history and architecture page

The Palladium Building in Grand Center was built in 1914 as a roller rink and balloon across Enright Ave from Vandeventer Place. In 1940, the building became the home of the Plantation Club, a WWII era African American night club. During the 1940s, the club was extremely popular, and had shows at 11pm, 1am, and 3am, and offered air conditioning at a time when it was uncommonly found in houses. The club declined in the 1950s, around the time that the VA hospital was built on the former site of Vandeventer Place. From 1963-2010, it was the home of thrift shops, but has since been vacant. In 2014, the building was placed on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Most Endangered List due to the VA hospital’s plans to buy it and demolish it for an expansion. The building still stands today, although it faces an uncertain future