To reach the second floor of the Eldorado Ballroom, a cultural institution in Houston’s Third Ward, visitors climb a notoriously steep wooden stair. Sections of the hulking staircase’s original pine have been worn smooth after 87 years, losing some of their natural grain to the touch of countless visitors to the dance hall and social venue.

Musical greats like Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington once climbed those stairs to perform in the space, alongside generations of Third Ward residents who were barred during the Jim Crow era from gathering in many other places. Today, the ascent doubles as an entry into the Eldorado’s history—and its future. The ballroom has been restored to its midcentury glory, reaffirming its role as a touchstone in a neighborhood that has endured decades of neglect and now faces mounting development pressure.

“The fact that people from the community could walk those same steps, I think, is symbolic of the greatness that comes through Third Ward and why it was so important to keep those stairs there,” says Danielle Burns Wilson, executive director of the nonprofit Project Row Houses, which owns the building and led the rehabilitation.

Created as one of Houston’s first numbered subdivisions after the city’s founding in 1836, Third Ward became a stronghold of Black community- and institution-building, forged by residents who made spaces for civic life in the face of exclusion and discrimination.

Among the lasting symbols of that work is Trinity United Methodist Church. Founded by formerly enslaved people in 1865, it played a role in establishing historically Black colleges and universities like Texas Southern University, less than a mile away. Emancipation Park, one of the oldest public parks in the state, was established in 1872, when a group of formerly enslaved people purchased the 10-acre tract.

Just southeast of downtown, Third Ward would become home to one of the largest concentrations of Black residents in Houston by the 1930s. And by the end of that decade, across the street from Emancipation Park, would rise the Eldorado Ballroom.

Part of a segregated yet bustling commercial district, the Eldorado was a community hub beyond entertainment, hosting social club gatherings, charity events, sock hops, and talent shows. Its stage served as a launching pad for up-and-coming singers and musicians, including renowned jazz and blues singer Jewel Brown, a Third Ward native who began performing as a child in talent shows at the Eldorado and other Houston venues. She became a fixture of the area’s jazz scene and toured the world as part of Louis Armstrong’s band.

“The Eldorado was the club of Houston. They had all the big bands, and they had Nat King Cole. Everybody was coming. Everybody who was somebody [performed at the] Eldorado,” Brown said in an oral history collected by the Houston Landing. “I didn’t even at the time fall into the class of those people. But they loved me.”

The Eldorado Ballroom thrived for three decades, but ultimately it could not keep up with the forces of change. Musical tastes moved past its mainstays. Locals moved up the economic ladder and purchased cars, but the Eldorado lacked sufficient parking. Smaller venues declined in popularity. And once Black residents were no longer confined to neighborhoods like Third Ward—long a target of disinvestment under segregation—they began to leave the inner city. The venue shut its doors in the 1970s.

The ballroom entered its next chapter in 1999 when oilman Hubert S. Finkelstein, who had acquired it in 1984, donated it to Project Row Houses, a community-based nonprofit founded by Black artists hoping to preserve the cultural heritage of Third Ward. Although it continued to house retail tenants on the first floor, the building’s condition had deteriorated. A series of starts and stops to improve it crystallized in 2021, when Project Row Houses launched a $9.7 million capital campaign for a full rehabilitation.

Before the restoration, the second-floor space was still used on occasion for events like anniversary celebrations, for which older attendees—often grandparents who had danced there in their youth or held their bridal showers at the Eldorado—sometimes had to be carried up the steep staircase. A new rear addition allowed the venue to add an outdoor deck, ADA-compliant bathrooms and, perhaps most important, an elevator.

The project also revealed quiet traces of the ballroom’s past that had never fully disappeared. While much of the pine floor upstairs had been replaced after the fires, the outline of the original stage remained. The stage itself had burned but had protected the wood floor underneath, which was left intact during the renovation.

“It’s my understanding, or others have imparted to me, when you can tell a story about history within the same walls [where] the history happened, it’s much more powerful,” Bucek says. “Since so much of the original fabric survived or could be reconstructed from the [historical] analysis, you feel the sense of history when you’re there. That’s the ongoing story, and that’s the treasure.”

Among the businesses on the first floor is Kindred Stories, a bookstore and community space where titles by Black authors and other authors of color line the shelves. Kindred Stories first opened in a smaller shotgun house before moving around the corner into the ballroom building. Readers are greeted by an eye-catching wallpaper of florals—inspired by the type you might see in your grandmother’s house—overlaid with portraits of Black authors and cultural figures. The wallpaper was custom designed by Houston-based artist Tay Butler.

The Eldorado’s revitalization comes as Third Ward increasingly faces the pressures of gentrification and displacement, with developers seeking to capitalize on its proximity to downtown. Various townhouse projects already surround the blocks near the ballroom. Other historically Black neighborhoods like Fifth Ward and Freedmen’s Town have changed more quickly, but the pace of development in Third Ward has been slower, because many of the historic properties are owned by churches and nonprofits or comprise schools and municipal buildings. This has bought groups like Project Row Houses valuable time to preserve not only vital institutions like the Eldorado but also the historic shotgun homes from which the organization takes its name. A few blocks over from the ballroom, some of these houses serve as artist’s studios and others as art display spaces that are open to the public.

“[The ballroom project] all started through a conversation of putting an elevator in, and from there people really saying this space means a lot more and needs a lot more and it can add value to the community,” says Danielle Burns Wilson, the Project Row Houses executive director. “The Eldorado Ballroom feels like an epicenter for Third Ward.”

When the Eldorado Ballroom reopened in the spring of 2023, Jewel Brown returned to its stage to usher in the venue’s new era. The singer presided over a temporary black-and-white dance floor in a dark blue brimmed hat, reprising her 1960s classic “Jerry,” which she had based on an earlier Harry Belafonte song and performed with Armstrong. (Brown died just a year later.)

Since then, the Eldorado has offered similar homecomings for other Houstonians.

The ballroom served as the namesake for a live, multi-disciplinary performance series created and curated by musician and Houston native Solange Knowles to honor contemporary and historic Black music. The “Eldorado Ballroom” series debuted in New York in 2023, with each run featuring various Black artists and musical styles, including classical, gospel, and zydeco. It came to Houston last year for a six-night run with shows at Jones Hall; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Eldorado itself.

After a stint as a talent buyer for a popular New York City jazz club operator, another Houston native, Shelly Travis, found her way back to the city to serve as the Eldorado’s venue and programming manager. She remembers attending church services at the ballroom when she was younger and took music lessons nearby with the renowned conductor and educator Anne Lundy, who now hosts weekly violin classes at the building.

Since reopening, the Eldorado has focused on remaining an affordable venue for locals while building community through offerings such as the music lessons, a twice-monthly children’s literacy program, vendor markets, and a Thanksgiving meal for Third Ward residents. It has hosted events like 80th birthday celebrations and anniversary parties for residents who first came to the ballroom as teenagers for sock hop nights.