Palladium

A two-story hall that filled its lot from Enright Avenue through to Delmar Boulevard, about 152 by 220 feet, built around a skating floor under iron girders, with storefronts along the street fronts. The main entrance faced Enright beneath a broad arch, and the top of the front carried terra cotta ornament spelling out PALLADIUM. Terra cotta lion heads ornamented the facade. Most of the exterior was later covered in tan stucco.

The Grand Amusement Company took out a permit on August 18, 1913, for a $35,000 building with stores and a skating rink, designed by James S. Lee and built by Charles N. Lund. The Palladium Rink opened on December 29, 1913, and within weeks was also hosting dances: a January 1914 benefit ball featured the tango and maxixe to Gene Rodemich’s Orchestra, the first St. Louis jazz band to record. It ran as a roller rink for more than 25 years. In 1940 the Club Plantation, opened in 1931 at 911 North Vandeventer and owned by Tony Scarpelli, moved in. Modeled on Harlem’s Cotton Club, it booked Black bandleaders and stars for a whites-only audience. The Jeter-Pillars Orchestra was the house band, with Jimmy Blanton, Charlie Christian, Harry “Sweets” Edison and Clark Terry in its ranks. Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, the Mills Brothers, Jimmie Lunceford and Billy Eckstine’s band all played there, and a teenage Miles Davis sat in with Eckstine. The club stayed into the late 1940s. From 1963 to 2006 the building held Veterans Village Clothing, a thrift store, and it was empty by 2011. Surveys found it eligible for the National Register, and in 2014 the National Trust for Historic Preservation named it one of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places. That March part of the lettered terra cotta at the top of the front fell to the sidewalk, and later the roof and north parapet collapsed. The Veterans Administration bought the property to give the John Cochran VA hospital across Enright an open buffer, and after a Section 106 review it was demolished in July 2022. Landmarks Association of St. Louis received the terra cotta lion heads, the only pieces kept.