The Fillmore - From Dance Hall to Rock Palace
Photo: total13, CC BY 2.0 (cropped)
A stop on San Francisco, District by District, a free self-guided tour.
On the corner of Fillmore Street and Geary Boulevard, the hall upstairs opened in 1912 as the Majestic Hall and Academy of Dancing. In 1954 Charles Sullivan, a Black businessman and promoter, took the lease, renamed it the Fillmore Auditorium and booked rhythm and blues and jazz acts for neighborhood crowds.
In December 1965 a young promoter named Bill Graham used Sullivan's dance permit for a benefit show, and in 1966 he began staging regular concerts here. Light shows, psychedelic posters and bands like Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead and Big Brother and the Holding Company made the Fillmore a launching pad for the San Francisco sound. Sullivan was shot and killed in 1966, a crime never solved.
It is still a working concert hall. Look up at the marquee and the chandeliers glowing in the upstairs windows.
More on Wikipedia: The Fillmore · Bill Graham · San Francisco sound
Stops on this tour
- Ferry Building and the Embarcadero - Where the City Met the World
- Financial District and Jackson Square - Gold Rush on the Old Shoreline
- Chinatown - The Neighborhood That Refused to Move
- North Beach and Telegraph Hill - Little Italy and the Beats
- Fisherman's Wharf - Italian Boats and Old Ships
- Nob Hill and Russian Hill - Cable Cars, Mansions and the Great Fire
- The Presidio - Two Centuries Guarding the Golden Gate
- Japantown and the Fillmore - Two Communities, One Neighborhood
- Haight-Ashbury - From Victorian Suburb to Summer of Love
- Golden Gate Park - Sand Dunes Turned Into a Park
- The Castro - A Neighborhood That Became a Movement
- The Mission - Where San Francisco Began
- Civic Center - Domes, Charters and Protest
- South of Market - From Rincon Hill to the Tech Boom