Remembering the Hottest Club in South Bend... In 1925

100 years ago, the Playland Park Dance Hall opened to massive spectacle

BY AARON HELMAN // POSTED MAY 22, 2025

The music is loud. It has to be to overpower the roar of the 4,000 revelers packed onto the dance floor, a sea of bodies sticky with sweat on a humid Saturday night, Memorial Day weekend. The band is tight: upbeat, driving rhythms, spicy brass, a bass line that pulses in your bones. Overhead, lights swirl in a rainbow symphony — fiery reds and oranges when the tempo peaks, cool blues when things mellow into romance.

It has all the hallmarks of a modern rave — the energy, the spectacle, the sensory overload — but this party isn't where you'd expect. And it certainly isn't when you'd expect.

You're in South Bend, Indiana. Lost in the music. Swept up in the crowd.

This is the brand-new Playland Park Dance Hall.

The year is 1925.

Just a year earlier, the future of Playland Park — then called Springbrook — wasn't assured. That changed when a young promoter named Earl Redden took over in 1924. With a flair for showmanship and an instinct for what crowds wanted, Redden saw something others had missed: a chance to turn a sleepy riverside amusement park into the beating heart of South Bend nightlife. The roller coasters and the race track would stay, but his real dream was the dance hall — a vast, modern venue where music and motion could take center stage.

It made sense. Visitors might ride a rollercoaster a handful of times each year, but a state-of-the-art dance hall was something they could return to night after night after night.

Construction began that fall. Redden promised the largest and finest dance pavilion in northern Indiana, and when it opened on Memorial Day weekend in 1925, it delivered. The building was an architectural showpiece: high ceilings, polished maple floors, colored lights overhead, and enough space to fit thousands — all drawn by the promise of big-name bands and a place to dance the night away. From the moment the first notes rang out, the Playland Park Dance Hall wasn't just a local curiosity. It was a sensation.

For Redden, it was never just about building a ballroom. It was about building buzz. He booked touring orchestras, hired top-notch lighting crews, and made sure every night felt like an event. In a city built on industry — and in the midst of the longest part of national Prohibition — he gave South Bend something it hadn't known it needed: a place to cut loose, dress up, and be seen.

 

 

Opening night was a sensation. He booked Verne Ricketts' 10-piece orchestra, dropped them onto a platform in the middle of the massive dance floor, and hoped that none of the musicians suffered from claustrophobia. Then, in a scene that would make a modern fire marshal curse, he opened the doors and let every single person in.

Admission was just 25 cents, and by the time the night ended, all of those quarters added up to more than $1,000 in revenue.

The building itself was a revelation, and the party was ferocious, carrying on to well after midnight. The lights were magical and mesmerizing, and the music of Ricketts and his band kept the party going for hours, except for a brief moment when George Firmin, manager of the South Bend Chamber of Commerce gave a short speech praising Redden for his business enterprise.

And yes, as complimentary as all of that was, a speech from a representative from Chamber of Commerce does seem like a bit of a buzzkill in the midst of a party like that one.

But it was no matter, because as soon as the next downbeat dropped, the party was on all over again, and the only thing that could stop it was the coming winter, still several months away.

And then after that, the snow would melt, and the nights would grow longer, and the dance floor at Playland would throb with life all over again, all summer, every summer — a place where South Bend came to move, to sweat, to fall in love, and to forget the world outside, if only for a song or two.

Aaron Helman is an author, historian and adventurer from South Bend. You may have seen him around South Bend drinking coffee. Learn more about his work or check out his books at aaronhelman.com.