Victory Grill

Before Threadgill's, Antone's or the Armadillo World Headquarters, there was the Victory Grill, which held about 250 people and became one of Austin's most important and oldest live blues venues. Besides its Black regulars, it drew White Austinites, soldiers and students of all races on weekends. James Brown, Ike and Tina Turner, Billie Holiday, Chuck Berry and Etta James played its stage, and Bobby "Blue" Bland, B. B. King and Gatemouth Brown were said to have started there; W. C. Clark also began his career at the club. A fire on October 10, 1988, closed the building.

What the plaque says

Victory Grill During World War II, segregation prevented African American servicemen from enjoying most civilian restaurants and recreational facilities. In an effort to address this issue, Austin civic leaders urged the city, through its "Negro War Recreation Council," to provide recreational sites for servicemen on leave from military posts. One such project, a gymnasium-auditorium complex in Rosewood Park, opened in April 1944 and was dedicated to Doris Miller, an African American Pearl Harbor hero. By war's end, African American servicemen had added but limited "R&R" sites in Austin. Johnny Holmes responded to this need when he opened the original Victory Grill (a.k.a. Victory Cafe) in celebration of VJ Day (Victory over Japan Day, August 15, 1945) in a converted icehouse on East 11th Street. Holmes created a venue in East Austin which provided returning African American servicemen with both an accessible dining establishment and blues and jazz entertainment. In 1947, with support from his devoted wife, Basyle Winifred Vanzandt, Holmes built a new structure at 1104 E. 11th Street to house the new Victory Grill. The enclosed open-air patio in the rear, dubbed the Kovac Room, became a well-known stop on the "Chitlin' Circuit," a collection of African American music venues across the west and south. The relatively small capacity of the Kovac Room and desegregation in the 1960s eventually led to the decline of the Victory Grill as African American musicians found new venues across the nation where they could perform, and the Victory Grill closed in 1973. Following Holmes' death in 2001, his children succeeded in re-opening the beloved site. Johnny Holmes was extremely passionate about the Victory Grill being of service to the community and its patrons, and he took a special interest in making soldiers feel at home. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1998, the Victory Grill is a home front cultural landmark of the World War II African American experience. Texas in World War II - 2010

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas State Cemetery — 0.2 mi
  A hill east of the Capitol that began with one general's grave in 1851 and now holds Stephen F. Austin, governors, Barbara Jordan and more than 2,000 Confederate veterans and widows.
• French Legation State Historic Site — 0.3 mi
  A raised pine house built in 1840 and 1841 for France's envoy to the Republic of Texas, who left Austin in a rage over a neighbor's pigs before it was finished.
• George Washington Carver Museum — 0.3 mi
  East Austin's museum of Black history and culture, grown from a segregated branch library moved across town in 1933, with a permanent exhibit on Juneteenth at its core.
• Texas State Capitol — 0.8 mi
  Austin's fourth statehouse, a Renaissance Revival capitol of 1888 that stands 311 feet to its Goddess of Liberty and was restored after the 1983 fire.

More markers nearby

• Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church — steps away
• Stuart Female Seminary — steps away
• Dr. Gideon Lincecum — 0.3 mi
• James Wales Jones — 0.3 mi