The Manhattan Casino, built in the mid 1920s by pioneering St. Petersburg businessman Elder Jordan in the neighborhood known as The Deuces, was a centerpiece of the city’s Black community for close to four decades.
It opened, in 1931, as the Jordan Dance Hall.
As a social center, the Manhattan was ground zero for weddings, tea parties, dances, talent shows, high school graduation ceremonies and regular Sunday gospel programs hosted by local celebrity Goldie Thompson, a radio DJ and empresario.
Famously, it was St. Petersburg’s stop on the so-called Chitlin’ Circuit. African American entertainers, most of them forbidden by the Jim Crow laws of the era from performing at “white” venues, played to capacity audiences…