Overview

Postcard of the Indiana Roof Ballroom from the late 1920s

The $100,000 Indiana Ballroom opened in early September 1927, located on the top (sixth) floor of the Indiana Theatre Building, itself containing the 3,200-seat Indiana Theatre movie palace.

Patterned after the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago, the Indiana Ballroom was capable of accommodating several thousand patrons, with cloakroom check facilities specifically able to accommodate 4,000 guests.

Prior to its opening the ballroom was reported as resembling a huge Spanish courtyard, surrounded by “gayly bedecked” Spanish houses and topped by a blue night sky with twinkling stars and floating clouds. On one side of the oval floor was a large stage for the orchestra, flanked by two balconies for entertainers. Other reports suggested the ballroom represented a little Spanish town with secluded lounges and resting rooms in the form of patios, loggias, miniature Spanish houses with tiled roofs and floors, with playful fountains and colorful Spanish shawls completing the picture.

Ballroom in the late 2010s

The ballroom’s design was allegedly inspired by In a Little Spanish Town, a popular song of the era.

The ballroom was at its most popular in the Big Band era of the 1940s and 1950s, when Tommy Dorsey, Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Bennie Goodman, and Guy Lombardo all played at the ballroom.

The ballroom closed in 1971. The theatre below the ballroom continued to operated but closed in the late 1970s and was then reopened in 1980 as a heavily altered space for the Indiana Repertory Theater. The ballroom reopened in late 1986, after a renovation, in a grand event headlined by Tony Bennett.