Seattle - Washington Hall 04

Washington Hall (also Washington Performance Hall), 153 14th Avenue, Seattle, Washington, USA. Built 1908 as a settlement house by the Danish Brotherhood Society in 1918 it was the site of the NAACP's "Grand Benefit Ball", Seattle’s first documented jazz performance. Among those who appeared there over the years were Billie Holliday, Marian Anderson, Mahalia Jackson, W.E.B. du Bois, Joe Louis, Duke Ellington, Martin Luther King Jr., and Jimi Hendrix.

From 1958 the building housed the Sons of Haiti Masonic Lodge. From 1978–1998 it was the leased home of avant-garde theater On the Boards, and was also the site of quite a few punk rock shows from the late 1970s into the 1980s. As of 2007, it looks like it's in a bit of a limbo; I think it's for sale. (See Pam Sitt, Historic theaters still in operation, Seattle Times, August 12, 2001. Sitt doesn't mention the punk rock shows, but I can vouch for those first-hand. - Joe Mabel)