A Spanish Revival car showroom from the auto-boom years, dark for decades under stucco and plywood, reopened as downtown Phoenix's essential mid-size stage. The Van Buren at 401 West Van Buren Street opened on August 23, 2017 with Cold War Kids playing to the old Phoenix Motor Company floor. The building went up in 1929-30 for the Phoenix Motor Company - later the Dud R. Day Motor Company - designed by Lescher and Mahoney, the firm behind the city's Orpheum Theatre, its arched showroom windows and roof trusses built to sell automobiles in style. The revival paired local promoter Charlie Levy of Stateside Presents and Crescent Ballroom fame with Live Nation, converting the 20,000-square-foot building from 2016 with a 250,000-dollar city historic-preservation grant after original storefronts, doors and trusses surfaced under the stucco. The main showroom holds 1,800-1,900 under the original wood rafters, with a desert-landscape mural framing the stage arch, plus a lobby bar, outdoor patio and VIP mezzanine - and the building joined the National Register of Historic Places in 2018. The booking spans rock, rap, country, world music and electronic - Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa, Kacey Musgraves and Orville Peck all played the room early - and Phoenix New Times voters named it Best New Music Venue in 2017 and Best Midsize Venue for six straight years. The pandemic broke the original partnership - Live Nation took full ownership in April 2021 after the shutdown's financial strain - but the venue's programming and neighborhood role carried through unchanged. The Van Buren completed downtown Phoenix's venue ladder between the Crescent Ballroom and the arenas, and did it inside the most handsome surviving building of the city's motor-row era. The venue's name honors the street itself - once the route of multiple federal highways and home to Arizona's first drive-in theater - and its success has anchored the block's wider revival, proof that downtown Phoenix could support a nightly mid-size concert habit that a decade earlier drove to Tempe or Scottsdale instead.

Type: Theater / Concert Hall

Address: 401 W Van Buren St, Phoenix, AZ, United States, 85003

Website: https://www.thevanburenphx.com

Cover Charge: 1

Capacity: 1800

Opening Date: 23/08/2017

Serves Food

Outdoor Area

Accessible