Re: Green Mill
Date: April 26, 2015 09:17PM
Thanks, WayOutWardell! Lots of good info.
I ran across this very helpful article in the Chicago Federation of Musicians magazine after I posted my request for info: https://www.cfm10208.com/images/intermezzo/58_20090204025921.pdf
"The building was nearly destroyed in a 1933 fire but
later rebuilt. The upstairs Green Mill cabaret room continued to
operate on a sporadic basis through the 1930s and 1940s, at times as a
ballroom called the Paradise (not to be confused with the west-side Paradise Ballroom)and later the El Morocco. Frank Snyder’s Dixieland band played there in the early 1940s. The current site of the Green Mill jazz club, the second door north of Lawrence, dates back at least to the 1930s. It was a cocktail lounge through World War II, owned by the Batsis brothers, according to current owner Dave Jemilo, and was a watering hole for a mostly neighborhood crowd and some after-hours patrons from the nearby Uptown and Riviera theaters and the Aragon Ballroom. A variety of musical groups entertained the customers long into the
early morning hours."
I still don't know when the cabaret/ballroom disappeared (there's a Mexican restaurant there now), but I think I have enough to go on.