Savoy Ballroom

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 business man 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 ..."

The Savoy was modeled after Faggen's downtown venue, Roseland Ballroom.The Roseland was a swanky, mostly white swing dance club. With swing’s rise to popularity and Harlem becoming a connected Black community, The Savoy opened at a perfect time, giving the rising talented and passionate Black dancers an equally beautiful venue. The Savoy's ballroom, which was 10,000 square feet in size, was on the second floor and a block long. It could hold up to 4,000 people. The interior was painted pink and the walls were mirrored.Colored lights danced on the sprung layered wood floor. In 1926, the Savoy contained a spacious lobby framing a huge, cut-glass chandelier and marble staircase. Leon James is quoted in Jazz Dance as saying "My first impression was that I had stepped into another world. I had been to other ballrooms, but this was different – much bigger, more glamour, real class ..."

The Savoy was extremely popular from the start. A headline from the New York Age March 20, 1926, reads "Savoy Turns 2,000 Away On Opening Night – Crowds Pack Ball Room All Week". The ballroom did not go dark a single night of the week.

The Savoy was unique in having the constant presence of a skilled elite of the best Lindy Hoppers, known as "Savoy Lindy Hoppers". Occasionally, groups of dancers such Whitey's Lindy Hoppers turned professional and performed in Broadway and Hollywood productions. Whitey turned out to be quite a successful agent, and in 1937, the Marx Brothers' movie A Day at the Races featured the group. Herbert White was a bouncer at the Savoy who was made floor manager in the early 30s. He was sometimes known as Mac, but with his ambition to scout dancers at the ballroom to form his own group, he became widely known as Whitey for the white streak of hair down the center of his head. He looked for dancers who were "young, stylized, and, most of all, they had to have a beat, they had to swing". The Savoy held a yearly dancing festival called the Harvest Moon Ball featuring lindy dancers. The first Ball was held in 1935, and the contestants introduced the Lindy Hop to Europe the next year.

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