Marks Place for use by Polish organizations and a Polish restaurant. ĭuring the 1920s, the buildings were bought by the Polish National Home, which combined them with 25 St. Arlington Hall also had some notable speakers including Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt (1895) and William Randolph Hearst (1905). In 1914 a shootout between "Dopey" Benny Fein's Jewish gang and Jack Sirocco's Italian mob, an event that marked the beginning of the predominance of the Italian American gangsters over the Jewish American gangsters, took place in the hall. The club moved, and a real estate developer bought 19, 21, and 23 between 1887–1888 and merged them into a ballroom and community hall called Arlington Hall, which hosted weddings, dances, political events and union meetings, among many other events. When the neighborhood gradually became the heart of Little Germany, with a population of German immigrant workers, #19 and 21 were purchased in 1870 by the Arlon Club, a German music society, for their clubhouse. The cavernous ballroom space with a balcony originally consisted of four buildings built in 1831 as townhouses.
Other bands played there before they were famous, such as Raven, the Allman Brothers Band, Sly & the Family Stone, and The Chambers Brothers. The Electric Circus became "New York's ultimate mixed-media pleasure dome, and its hallucinogenic light baths enthralled every sector of New York society." Its hedonistic atmosphere also influenced the later rise of disco culture and discotheques.Įxperimental bands such as The Velvet Underground, jam bands such as The Grateful Dead, soul acts such as Ike & Tina Turner, and avant-garde composers such as minimalist Terry Riley and electronic music pioneer Morton Subotnick played at the club. With its invitation (from one of its press releases) to "play games, dress as you like, dance, sit, think, tune in and turn on," and its mix of light shows, music, circus performers and experimental theater, the Electric Circus embodied the wild and creative side of 1960s club culture.įlame throwing jugglers and trapeze artists performed between musical sets, strobe lights flashed over a huge dance floor, and multiple projectors flashed images and footage from home movies. Freeman and their partners and designed by Chermayeff & Geismar. The club was created by Jerry Brandt, Stanton J. Marks Place between Second and Third Avenues in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, from 1967 to August 1971. The Electric Circus was a nightclub located at 19-25 St.