Harmon’s Histories: Missoula once danced the night away in grand pavilions

By Jim Harmon

Back in the 1920s, dancing to the music of a live band or orchestra was hugely popular across the country and here in western Montana.

The Elks Club and the Florence Hotel in Missoula featured large ballrooms, and in the summertime, couples enjoyed the great outdoor dance pavilion at Greenough Park.

Greenough Park was developed by Thomas Lockman Greenough, an Iowan who moved west in 1882 and made a fortune in mining and supplying timber for railroad tie-making. He later expanded into banking, working closely with A.B. Hammond.

The Greenough dance pavilion, built in 1905, fell into disrepair by the mid-1920s, and Greenough’s widow closed it, holding the final public dance there on September 26, 1925.

The dancing scene then shifted to the outdoor pavilion at the Western Montana Fairgrounds. The Sheridan Brothers Orchestra, featured in last week’s column, first played at Greenough Park, later shifting their home base to the fairgrounds.

Contractor C.H. Elliot of Missoula built the original fairgrounds dance pavilion for just over $4,000 in the summer of 1925. The framed building contained a “regulation dance hall” measuring 50 by 90 feet.

The following year, the county announced plans for major improvements at the fairgrounds in an effort to “convert the site into a practical park for all sorts of pleasure gatherings.” The dance pavilion was among the priorities.

For reasons never explained in press accounts of the day, the new pavilion and the area surrounding it, were given a Japanese motif, with the name, “Tokyo Gardens.”

I spent a considerable amount of time going down that rabbit hole.

Not a single newspaper account, nationally or locally, mentioned any significant Japanese influence in American culture, to account for the theme.

Nonetheless, reported the Daily Missoulian newspaper, the Japanese idea was carried out completely, “from overhead decorations to costumes of employees and orchestras.”

While the motif was never fully elaborated upon, the pavilion itself, was described in great detail. It was “an oblong structure, painted white, with a four slope roof of black, and large enough to allow a dancing floor practically the size of the old Greenough park pavilion.”

The entrance to the open pavilion was on the east end of the structure. The south side was “devoted to a checkroom, ladies’ and men’s rooms equipped with running water, and a refreshment parlor.”

That refreshment parlor was located above the dance floor so that all the couples at the tables could watch the dancers below. There was “fountain service, sandwiches, pastry, tea and coffee.”

The floor itself was over-sized to accommodate the dancers and still have a large area of seating for spectators “where they may see well and still be out of the way of the dancers.”

The county ended up spending about $10,000 on Tokyo Gardens. That would be about $180,000 in today’s dollars.

But the county leaders were confident the investment was worth it, and the facility would be “by far the most modern summer dancing place that western Montana has ever had.” Management of the pavilion was assigned to the Sheridan Brothers.

Newspaper articles about the Tokyo Gardens pavilion became sparse in 1936 and 1937.

There was a single, small advertisement on New Year’s Eve, 1936 of a dance featuring the band “40-et-8”, and a final small notice in May, 1937, of the Missoula Dancing club’s final “ball” of the season planned for May 22nd and by August, the venue was referred to in the past tense.

That was it. No further mention of Tokyo Gardens could be found in newspaper searches.

If any reader should know of the final disposition of the “Tokyo Gardens” pavilion, I’d love to hear from you. Just contact me through the Missoula Current website!