Vintage Roseland Dance City NY Pendant or Charm RARE! Collectibles Taxi Dancing Accessories Swing Big Band

What a wonderful little rare piece of history. This very petite pendant or charm is from the famous Roseland Dance City Hall in NY. Roseland opened in 1917.

It measures 3/4", not including the jump ring.

I am not sure of the circa of this piece.

The pendant has age appropriate patina. I have not found another one on the internet. Photos were enlarged to show details.

*In photo #3 I have included a photo of a postcard of the interior of Roseland. The photo is for reference only. I do not have the post card and it is not included in this sale.

Below is some fascinating history on Roseland Dance city Hall from the net:

"From 1917 when it moved to New York from Philadelphia where moralists were pushing it out of town until 2014 when Lady Gaga insisted on being the establishment’s final performer, Roseland was New York’s and America’s arbiter of popular social dancing. It went through multiple styles, trends, and enthusiasms. It tried to appeal to generation after generation. Roseland outclassed and survived them all by remaining an authentic New York establishment. Founded by Louis Brecker with financing by the Yuengling beer family, Roseland was sometimes late in hopping on trends because it wanted to stay classy and sophisticated. It was always the place for cheek-to-cheek ballroom dancing.

In its early years, Roseland was associated with a phenomenon known as “Taxi-Dancing,” that is, making women available for being paid by the dance. In 1931, there were over a hundred taxi-dance halls in New York City alone, patronized by between 35,000 and 50,000 men every week.

As the club grew older, Brecker attempted to formalize the dancing more by having hostesses dance for 11¢ a dance or $1.50 a half-hour with tuxedoed bouncers (politely known as "housemen") keeping order. It was to work its way into stories by Ring Lardner, Sherwood Anderson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and John O'Hara.

The original New York Roseland was torn down in 1956 and it moved to its new venue on West 52nd, a building that Brecker earlier had converted from an ice-skating rink to a roller-skating rink. It had been built in 1922 at a cost of $800,000 by the Iceland ice-skating franchise. A thousand skaters showed up on opening night at the 80-by-200-foot rink on November 29, 1922. Iceland went bankrupt in 1932 and the rink opened as the Gay Blades Ice Rink. Brecker took it over in the 1950s and converted it to roller-skating.

Time magazine described the new Roseland's opening interior as a "purple-and-cerise tentlike décor that creates a definite harem effect." Brecker attempted to maintain its ballroom dancing style, banning rock and roll and disco. In 1974 Brecker told the The New York Times, "Cheek-to-cheek dancing, that's what this place is all about.”

Orchestras that played the venue included Vincent Lopez, Harry James, Louis Armstrong, Tommy Dorsey, and Glenn Miller. The appearance by Count Basie was a turning point in his career and a break though in the all-white atmosphere of the club. One of his songs was to be the "Roseland Shuffle".

Brecker popularized Marathon dancing until it was banned, staged female prizefights, yo-yo exhibitions, sneezing contests, and dozens of highly publicized jazz weddings with couples who met at the club."