Crystalballroompdx.com Website Review

Opened in 1914 as Cotillion Hall, the dance hall was rechristened in 1950 as the Crystal Ballroom. It wasn’t until 1997 that McMenamins took stewardship of the legendary building. After being shut down by the city in 1968 due to “code violations,” the Crystal was dark for nearly 30 years, despite failed attempts to revive it. Then, in 1997, McMenamins Crystal Heard about the Crystal’s “famous floating dance floor”? It's ball bearing and rocker design, first patented in 1905 by Charles R. Hunt, brought a whole new sensation to Portland dancing. An early 1900s guest said of the dance hall’s floating floor that it made “a good dancer out of a bad one.” Another recalled that it made dancing “almost effortless.” The Crystal’s famous “floating” dance floor’s bounce factor could originally be adjusted using a racheted gear. Appropriate to each dance, the floor could be made rigid or wide open. The Crystal is said to have a strong “sense of place,” a phenomenon defined as an energy that affects the quality of the experience and its outcomes for the group that is gathered within. Just a few of the performers who have graced the Crystal stage: Ike & Tina Turner, the Grateful Dead, Patti Smith, James Brown, Wilco, B.B. King, Sleater-Kinney, Motorhead -- and the list goes on…. The Crystal’s vibrant energy attracted Mike McMenamin for years. During the 1950s, the Crystal might have hosted a high-society old-time dance, a sorority pajama party, a Gypsy wake, and James Brown, all in one week. Gary Ewing was the Crystal’s legendary light show artist in the late ‘60s, filling the space with transcendent color and images in “harmonic totality” with the music. “My ambition is to fill a volume, that is a ballroom, with color the way a glas* is filled with water. The people would be dancing in color, covered with color.” – Gary Ewing, light show artist, 1967 The building’s first owner, Montrose Ringler, is credited with