Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom

Opened in 1899, the Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom has brought entertainers of all stripes to the New Hampshire shoreline for more than 100 years. The facility was opened on July 15, 1899 by Wallace D. Lovell, who owned the Exeter, Hampton and Amesbury Street Railway Company, with the hope of bringing more business and tourism into the Hampton Beach area. Today the facility is a landmark of Hampton Beach and is synonymous with the summer report.

The Casino was expanded in 1927 to adapt to the changing nature of entertainment, when the national star was just coming into existence. The new owners wanted a facility that could hold 5,000 people, and the Casino Ballroom was born. After the expansion, the Casino Ballroom boasted the largest dance floor in New England, and 20,000 people made use of the massive space on a weekly basis.

The rise of rock and roll brought many more changes to the Casino Ballroom. Following an unruly incident at a Jethro Tull concert, where fans without tickets attempted to enter the Ballroom by any means possible, the town of Hampton banned further rock and roll concerts. Looking like the end was near for the Ballroom, the owners at the time sold the facility to a consortium of local businessmen interested in restoring it to its former glory.

After renovating the facility and restoring many of its original features, the Ballroom reopened in the 1970s as Club Casino. Renovations, however, were not enough to draw promoters back to the venue, and memories of the Jethro Tull concert lingered. Seeing an opportunity, one of the new owners sought to book then-little-known names such as U2, Tom Jones, Ray Charles, and George Carlin as a way of restoring the venue's reputation. His bet paid off, and following another renovation in the late '70s and early '80s, Club Casino began booking the likes of Jerry Seinfeld, Melissa Etheridge and Phish. So popular was the location, in fact, that it was able to fit 50 events into a three-month period, unheard of at the time for most music halls.

As a new decade dawned, changes were afoot at Club Casino. The renovations of the prior decade were losing their glitter, and the Club had developed a reputation for tough bouncers and strict rules against dancing. With customer service as the focus, the name was changed back to the Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom, in an attempt to regain some of its past glory. The facade of the building was redone, and the adjacent hotel demolished. Changes in place, the Ballroom was ready for its first test. Such an opportunity presented itself with a 1995 RatDog concert. As the concert took place on the eve of Jerry Garcia's death, fans and the media alike descended on the Ballroom, bringing about memories of the Jethro Tull concert 15 years earlier. But, thanks to improved security and a focus on customer service, the concert went off without incident. The Ballroom was officially ready for its next decade of service.

References

*cite news |title=Casino Ballroom History |url=http://www.casinoballroom.com/history.php |accessdate=2008-07-02