Willowbrook Ballroom
The Willowbrook Ballroom was a dance ballroom and banquet facility located in Willow Springs, Illinois along Archer Avenue. It was founded in 1921 by John Verderbar and named Oh Henry Park.
The Willowbrook Ballroom is often cited as the last place Resurrection Mary danced before her death. Her ghost is said to appear at the ballroom at times, dancing with the patrons.
On Friday October 28, 2016 the Ballroom was gutted by a fire. The building was having work done on the roof where the fire was suspected of starting. Due to water pressure issues the fire department had to wait on tanker trucks, which caused a delay in getting the fire under control.
Founded in 1921 by John Verderbar, an industrious Austrian immigrant. Verderbar purchased 5 acres (20,000 m2) along wooded Archer Ave. He planned to build a peaceful weekend home.
His son, Rudy Verderbar, was one of the throngs of young people who danced at the nearly 400 ballrooms and dance halls that thrived in the Chicago area during the mid-to-late 1910s. After dancing in an outdoor pavilion in Michigan, Rudy waged a relentless campaign to scrap the idea of a summer home and build an outdoor dance pavilion. After some research, his father agreed, and in 1921, the all wooden Oh Henry Park was built. It proved so popular, in 1923, the open-air pavilion was enlarged and a new 10-cents-a-dance policy was implemented. The ballroom was supposedly named after the Oh Henry candy bar, manufactured in Chicago by the Williamson Candy Company, who paid Verderbar for the naming rights.
In 1930, the pavilion was destroyed in a devastating fire. Verderbar quickly assembled a team of 200 carpenters to construct an enormous outdoor dance floor in time for the next Saturday night. The remaining ten weeks of Oh Henry’s 1930 dance season drew even bigger crowds due to massive publicity touting the romantic aspects of "dancing under the stars."
On May 3, 1931, more than 1,700 invited guests and dignitaries danced the first dances in the new Oh Henry Ballroom. It had been built at the then-staggering Great Depression-era cost of $100,000.
As Big Band fever spread throughout 1940s America, the Oh Henry Ballroom, now with air conditioning, became a major force in the Midwest’s entertainment industry. Even during the Second World War, typical weekly attendance was about 10,000 dancers. The ballroom’s popularity was reason for Chicago bus lines to be rerouted to provide direct service to and from the ballroom.
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