Eldorado Ballroom

Profits from the ballroom and the Duprees' other businesses paid for Anna Dupree's giving. Born in Carthage in 1891, she picked cotton as a child, then built a beauty trade making house calls in River Oaks, until a White beauticians' group stopped Black operators' house calls. By 1940 she had given $20,000 for a Fifth Ward orphanage cottage. She led the drive for the Eliza Johnson Home for Aged Negroes, named for her mother, which opened in 1952, and in 1946 the couple gave $11,000 toward Texas Southern's first permanent building. She died in that home in 1977.

What the plaque says

Eldorado Ballroom BETWEEN 1900 AND 1920, A RESIDENTIAL BUILDING BOOM FUELED THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A COMMERCIAL DISTRICT ON DOWLING STREET, THE THIRD WARD'S MAIN ARTERY. THE BUSTLING DISTRICT INCLUDED RESTAURANTS, SHOPS, CHURCHES, STORES, PROFESSIONAL OFFICES, MOVIE THEATERS AND NIGHTCLUBS. LOCATED AT THE CORNER OF ELGIN AND DOWLING STREETS, THE ELDORADO BALLROOM WAS DESIGNED BY ARCHITECT LENARD GEBART FOR THE PROMINENT PHILANTHROPISTS AND BUSINESS OWNERS CLARENCE ARNOLD DUPREE AND HIS WIFE ANNA JOHNSON DUPREE. THE BALLROOM OPENED IN 1939 AND WAS NAMED FOR ONE OF THE SOCIAL CLUBS TO WHICH THE BLACK COMMUNITY'S MOST PROMINENT PROFESSIONALS AND BUSINESS PEOPLE BELONGED. THE ELDORADO BALLROOM PROVIDED OPPORTUNITIES FOR MEMBERS OF THE BLACK MIDDLE AND UPPER CLASSES TO DEMONSTRATE THEIR WEALTH AND SOPHISTICATION. THE BALLROOM LAUNCHED THE CAREERS OF MUSICIANS AND BAND LEADERS SUCH AS MILTON LARKIN, ILLINOIS JACQUET AND ARNETT COBB. IN THE LATE 1950s, THE ELDORADO BALLROOM HOSTED POPULAR ENTERTAINMENT ACTS FROM NATIONALLY-KNOWN BLACK ARTISTS IN THE BLUES AND R&B GENRES. BY THE 1960s, MIGRATION OUT OF THE INNER CITY RESULTED IN THE RELOCATION OR CLOSURE OF MANY BUSINESSES IN THE AREA. IN ADDITION, THE DECLINING IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL CLUBS, INADEQUATE PARKING, AND COMPETITION FROM OTHER VENUES CUMULATIVELY LED TO THE BALLROOM'S CLOSURE IN THE 1970s. FOLLOWING THE DEATHS OF THE DUPREES, OILMAN HUBERT FINKELSTEIN PURCHASED THE PROPERTY IN 1984 AND 15 YEARS LATER DONATED IT TO PROJECT ROW HOUSES, A COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION. THE ELDORADO BALLROOM IS ONE OF THE FEW HISTORIC BUILDINGS REMAINING IN THE THIRD WARD'S FORMER COMMERCIAL DISTRICT. (2011)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Emancipation Park — steps away
  The Third Ward park that freedpeople bought for Juneteenth in 1872, rebuilt in 2017 on Emancipation Avenue and still the center of the city's June 19 celebration.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 0.8 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 1.6 mi
  The oldest art museum in Texas, grown from a 1900 schoolroom art league into a campus of Watkin, Mies van der Rohe and later buildings, with Ima Hogg's Bayou Bend up the bayou.
• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 1.8 mi
  Ten historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.

More markers nearby

• The Legacy of Emancipation Park — steps away
• Sam (Lightnin') Hopkins — steps away
• Jordan Grove Missionary Baptist Church — steps away
• Trinity United Methodist Church — 0.2 mi