The Savoy Ballroom

The Savoy sat on the third floor of the Miller-Roy Building, built in 1929, and became a stop on the Chitlin' Circuit, the network of venues that kept Black performers working. Acts listed for it include Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Billy Eckstine, Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Ethel Waters. The building's later story is survival: by the 1970s it was considered abandoned, a 2010 city council vote for demolition threatened it, and it reached the National Register in 2011. It became apartments, with a new neighbor called Bayou Savoy holding a 5,000-square-foot resource center for nonprofits.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Masur Museum of Art — 1.2 mi
  A 1929 limestone Tudor house on South Grand Street, built by a Monroe lumberman and given to the city in 1963 by the Masur family to become its art museum.
• Biedenharn Museum and Gardens — 1.5 mi
  The 1913 Monroe home of the man the museum credits with first bottling Coca-Cola, with a Coca-Cola museum, his daughter's Bible collection and her gardens.
• Chennault Aviation and Military Museum — 3.2 mi
  A Monroe museum that began as a 1986 reunion of Selman Field airmen and now holds Flying Tigers displays, Delta's Monroe beginnings and a park of retired aircraft.
• Northeast Louisiana Delta African American Heritage Museum — 5.1 mi
  A museum chartered in 1994 that tells the story of the Black pioneers of Monroe and northeast Louisiana, with local art, quilts and the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail's only Ouachita Parish stop.

More markers nearby

• W.L. "Jack" Howard Theatre — 0.3 mi
• The Monroe Civic Center Arena — 0.3 mi
• B.D. Robinson Conference Hall — 0.3 mi
• The Honorable Abe Edward Pierce III Convention Center — 0.4 mi