Eldorado rising

Rice students push for revival of historic Third Ward ballroom with jazz benefit 

A Rice University architecture student is helping bring the Eldorado Ballroom in Houston’s historic Third Ward back to life and invites the community to participate.

An architectural rendering of the planned Eldorado renovation.

Tanvi Nagpal is spearheading a benefit poetry and jazz concert Nov. 23 at the ’30s-era facility that once regularly hosted Ray Charles, B.B. King and Count Basie to help bring about what they hope will be a full revival, in cooperation with Project Row Houses (PRH).

Nagpal is working with the PRH strategic planning committee to kick-start fundraising for the ballroom and help create a comprehensive plan for its future. She said the event is intended to further the goals of a project begun last summer on behalf of the university’s Center for Civic Leadership (CCL).

She would love for the event to echo the Eldorado’s glory days, when top-tier African-American musicians made frequent stops, and local players on their way to the big time — among them, Johnny “Guitar” Watson, Albert Collins, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson and Lightnin’ Hopkins — were regulars there.

As part of the center’s new program, Houston Action Research Teams, Nagpal and her teammates spent much of the summer analyzing the social, architectural and political status of the building, the home of dances, concerts and community events for decades before the widespread desegregation of Houston in the ’60s made it less of a draw for the African-American community.

To finish their assignment, the team of Nagpal, architecture student Lauren Eggert, anthropology student Kaitlyn Sisk and sociology student Asiya Kazi delivered a report to PRH on the state of the ballroom and a possible way forward.

From left, students Lauren Eggert, Tanvi Nagpal, Kaitlyn Sisk and Asiya Kazi developed a plan to renovate the Eldorado Ballroom as their Houston Action Research Teams project. Photo courtesy of the Center for Civic Leadership

But Nagpal said she couldn’t let go.

“When we gave our report in August, it felt unfinished,” Nagpal said. “I wanted to stick to the project, because I really want to see it through.”

The two-month summer project incorporated research into the building’s history, interviews with participants in events past and present at the Eldorado and an analysis of the structure, which has commercial space at street level and the ballroom itself upstairs.

“The older members of the community remembered the ballroom with a sense of magical reverence,” they wrote. “The first image that they recall is of a buzzing ballroom filled with men and women dressed in their best, famous jazz and blues artists playing on the stage and a close, connected community. To a lot of them, it is a symbol of the golden days on Dowling Street.”

“The more we looked into it, the more we realized the current significance of the building actually lies in the first floor, not the second,” Nagpal said. The team concluded that having tenants in the five storefronts would provide cash flow for PRH, which holds a 99-year lease on the building, and help pay for needed renovations. Tenants would pay subsidized rents and occupy the spaces for between two and four years to ensure stability, and would be required to take part in community projects.

Renovations would ideally include a new foundation, updated HVAC, service and passenger elevators to make the ballroom accessible to the handicapped and ease the burden on caterers and performers.

Inside the Eldorado Ballroom. In its glory days, the Third Ward ballroom hosted the hottest local and national jazz and blues acts from the '30s through the '60s. Photo courtesy of Project Row Houses

“One of the biggest problems is that they don’t have the original blueprints of the building,” Nagpal said. “There is nothing an architect could use to pick up on utility lines to set up a commercial space and bring the building up to code.”

Eric Miller, an engineer with Kinder Morgan and also a member of the PRH board’s strategic planning committee, said the Rice students’ contribution has been very helpful. “They were on their path to identify the history and present condition and make recommendations for the future of the Eldorado, and the PRH committee was doing the same thing,” he said. “So we were on parallel paths, and I think we came up with the same conclusions. Tanvi’s commitment to follow through on that report is key.”

“Officials at Project Row Houses were surprised and very pleased with the clear-headed presentation the students gave of their proposal,” said Elizabeth Vann, associate director of civic research and design for CCL. “They say the ideas they presented are practical and will get serious consideration.”

Taking part in the Eldorado project has inspired Nagpal to consider a career in restoration of historic structures.

“I really like doing this,” she said. “Even though renovation is tougher than designing a new building, this project has helped me understand why I study architecture.”

For information about the concert, visit eldoradolive.eventbrite.com.