Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 00:34:00

St. Louis kept one grand ballroom alive from the big-band age, and it still has the best dance floor in the Midwest. The Casa Loma Ballroom at 3354 Iowa Avenue, at the corner of Cherokee Street and Iowa in the Benton Park West neighbourhood of south St. Louis, opened on 7 September 1927 as the Cinderella Ballroom, built by the Freund brothers - Harry and Eugene - who had operated the Cinderella Airdome outdoor theatre on the same corner since 1921. Architects Wedemeyer and Nelson gave the original building an Italian Renaissance Revival dress, and the block also carried the Cinderella Bowling Alley and Dance Academy through the 1920s and 1930s. The hall churned through managers at a loss until 1935, when partners Art Kawell and H. J. "Nap" Burian took over and renamed it after the Casa Loma Orchestra, turning it into the premier ballroom in St. Louis almost overnight. Disaster followed fame: a fire gutted the building on 19 January 1940, and the Freunds had William Wedemeyer - now partnered with his son Wesley - rebuild it in Streamlined Art Deco style, reopening by November of the same year with the feature that defines the room to this day, a 5,000-square-foot "floating" maple dance floor laid over an inch of rubber that flexes underfoot like a sprung trampoline. The guest book from the golden years reads like the Swing Era itself: Glenn Miller, Frank Sinatra, Benny Goodman, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey and the touring big bands of the 1940s and 1950s all played the room, drawn by cheap admission and a neighbourhood crowd that danced hard. Burian died in 1958, Kawell sold in 1967, and the ballroom rode out the rock era as a South Side institution - 18,000 square feet with a wraparound balcony overlooking the floor, reserved seating for about 850, and five attended parking lots feeding the door. Today the Casa Loma anchors the revived Cherokee Street antique-and-arts district, hosting swing and salsa nights with dance lessons, big-band tribute orchestras, weddings, quinceaneras and private events with in-house catering. Nearly a century after the Cinderella opened, the formula has not changed: a live band, a sprung maple floor, and a room built for nothing but dancing.