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Bryanna Jones
Professor Cardoza
Portland-UNST 107K
24 November 2015
Ringlers - The Crystal Ballroom
The Crystal Ballroom in Portland, Oregon elicits large smiles and many stories.
What most people know about the Crystal Ballroom is its staple experience: the concerts held
there and the bands that play there. What most people do not know is the history hidden in the
walls and how the Crystal Ballroom became what it is today. In 1914 Michael Ringler opened
the doors to the now renowned Crystal Ballroom. He as well as the Crystal Ballroom has an
incredible history.
Michael Ringler was born in Canada in 1876. He soon moved with his family to
the United States. His mother was a German immigrant and his father was a master tailor from
Holland. Starting as a young boy Ringler was attracted to athletics and business. At only seven
years old Ringler began selling newspapers in front of a busy, up-scale hotel in Michigan. One
day, President Grover Cleveland was staying at the hotel and became one of Ringlers customers.
Another one of Ringlers customers was a beautiful woman in her forties, who was the mistress
of a Michigan state senator. Sworn to secrecy, they had sixteen year-old Ringler carry notes
back and forth between them, and for his silence he was rewarded with several dress suits and an
appointment as assistant superintendent of Michigans state horticulture exhibit at the Chicago
Worlds Fair in 1839 (Hills 10). While at the Worlds Fair, he entered the 100-yard international
swimming meet held in Lake Michigan. The seventeen-year-old finished third. Throughout

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Ringlers life he continued to show superior athletic talent. In the 1890s, Ringler taught a new
game - soon to be called basketball - to a squad of his fellow YMCA members. Ringler was later
credited with introducing basketball to Portland (Hills 10).
In fall of 1897, while thousands of gold seekers were leaving Chicago for the
Yukon Territory, twenty-one-year-old Ringler made his way by train to Portland where he had
just been hired to fill the new position of physical director for Portlands YMCA. Weeks after he
arrived, Ringler was accused in the local newspaper of passing training secrets and game
signals of one private athletic club to its rival (Hills 12). He denied any wrong doing.
Ringler spent six years working at Portlands YMCA, then left in 1904 to open his
own establishment. At first, he only provided instruction for calisthenics and gymnasium games,
Indian clubs, and basketball. Though, over a short period of ten years, he upgraded his school of
physical culture, relocating it and adding a swimming pool and a ballroom. Dancing became the
main activity at the enhanced Ringler Academy.
During the last part of the centurys first decade and the beginning of the second,
Ringlers ballroom continued to rise. Every new dance trend brought masses of people to his
hall. The Ringler academy is credited with being the first dance hall in the Northwest to present
the fox trot, one-step, and tango (Hills 14). When reformers were insisting for a purging of
Portlands immoral dance establishments, Ringler was known throughout the city, and
progressively more across the region. His patrons included some of the most prominent names in
the city, and many of the upper-crust refused to come to his downtown facility. To accommodate
them, he provided private lessons in their homes.

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In early 1913, Ringler began the search for a new ballroom site in a better part of
the city. His new and improved ballroom was located in a neighborhood that was undergoing a
shift from a mostly suburban area to mostly commercial. The one disadvantage of the location of
the dance hall was that the building chosen was right next to the Henry Weinhard Brewery.
Through the reform era, building a dance hall next door to a brewery could potentially have put
an end to the business before it even began. Although it was a large risk, Ringler still took the
building, thinking that the brewery would go out of business because of the reform movement.
Strangely enough, he was correct. When the states prohibition law passed in 1916, the
Weinhard plant suspended its beer brewing for the rest of the Prohibition.
After roughly a decade of offering public dances and visiting many ballrooms all
over the country, Ringler could picture what the perfect ballroom should look like. He hired a
German architect named Robert F. Tegen to implement his ideas. Prior to starting plans for the
Cotillion, Tegen had built and finalized St. Pauls Hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia, and
the Lipman Wolfe Warehouse in Southeast Portland (Rosman, "Oregon Historical Photo: The
Floating Ballroom"). Shortly after finishing Ringlers new dance hall, he went on to design St.
Marys Hospital in Walla Walla, Washington.
The result of their efforts - the Cotillion - was a $100,000 multi-purpose structure
that included enough space for an automotive service garage. The ground level featured overhead
doors that allowed cars to enter the automotive service garage from Burnside Street. When
inside, a large elevator lifted cars to an additional garage space on the east half of the buildings
second floor. Ringler reserved part of this space for the parking of his dance patrons. Ringlers
ballroom become one of the first (if not the first) commercial or entertainment structures in
Portland to offer off-street parking within the building (Hills 14).

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For the ballroom and dance academy, a banquet room and kitchen were
constructed in the basement. Nearby was a second, elegant elevator, which could be ridden to the
Cotillions street-level lobby and two upper floors. On the west half of the second floor there was
office space as well as a small teaching hall for Ringlers dance instruction. The third floor held a
ladies parlor, mens smoking lounge, balcony, refreshment counter, locker rooms, and the
Grand Ballroom, which was the buildings heart. The Grand Ballrooms dcor featured
intricate wood and plaster work and a series of graceful archways, with a stage in the corner. A
line of light fixtures was built into the walls moldings. Benches were placed along the border of
the dance floor, and bowl-shaped chandeliers were suspended from the two-story high ceiling.
They included a special floating floor into the ballrooms design. Ringler valued the floating
floor so much that he added a $1,000 patent lease fee to the total price tag (The PDX Guy,
"Crystal Ballroom Portland | Portland Attractions"). Statements of many long-time dance hall
regulars of the ballroom said that it was like dancing on a cloud (Hills 17). Mrs. Annabelle
Allen, who went to many of the ballroom functions, said that the floor made a good dancer out
of a bad one. She recalled that even eighty-five-year-olds [were] out there really cutting the
rug (Hills 17). Robert Tegen built three other ballrooms with floating floors: one in Chicago,
another in Los Angeles, and the third in New York. However, the Crystals floor was the only one
that lasted.
Ringler ran Cotillion Hall for seven years, and Portlanders continued to turn out
for dances in incredible numbers. During the year 1914, nearly forty dances were held at the
citys various dance halls every week. By the end of 1921, the average number of dances held
each week had jumped to an incredible fifty-four (Hills 18). Portlands dance-loving public
were absolutely thrilled by the presence of the ballroom.

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Nevertheless, the city bureaucrats did not share the same enthusiasm. Portland
executed some of the most severe dancing and dance hall regulations in the country. Dancing
was forbidden from all public schools and hotels, alcohol was prohibited at all public venues
where dances were conducted, and no dancing was permitted after midnight or on Sundays.
Dance halls had to be kept brightly lit, and rowdy conduct and profanity were not allowed. Even
after these regulations the public still feared that the dancing environments in Portland were
dangerously permissive. Their solution was to implement a standard dance position. No undue
familiarity between partners shall be permittedThe lady in dancing should place her right hand
on her partners arm and not on his shoulder or back, and the man shall encircle the lady with
one arm only. Partners shall keep their bodies and faces free from each other. To insure their
provisions were followed, they hired a dance hall inspector.
Dance the tango and you face arrest (David Greenwald, "Tim Hills on the
Crystal Ballroom's 'legendary shows' and 'infamous' moments"), was a message delivered by
Portlands dance hall inspector in the fall of 1913. The decree came soon after the city passed
laws outlawing numerous other dances of questionable character. People were particularly
shocked by the new types of dances they called animal dances... the bunny hug, grizzly bear,
and the turkey trot (Hills 20). In spite of this anti-dancing fervor, the Crystal Ballroom originally named Cotillion Hall - opened its doors and prospered.
Ringlers every move was closely observed by head of the Portland Police
Bureaus Womens Protective Division, Lola Baldwin (Myers 6). In less than three months after
the Cotillions opening ball, the Friday Night Dance Clubs special Wednesday evening function
was interrupted and shut down by the police department. The function had illegally continued
past midnight (Myers 7). As written in A Municipal Mother, a bibliography of Baldwin, the

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early twentieth-century activist claimed dance halls were an unmitigated evil, the threshold to
the wineroom and the brothel (Myers 2). In becoming a police officer in 1908, Baldwin became
the first woman in America to perform police service for a municipality.
After the interruption, Ringler was concerned about losing his prestigious
clientele and wanted to keep the Cotillion squeaky clean. However, after several years of
following the rules, Ringler got bored and tried to sidestep the law many times by holding dances
outside of the ballroom in places for which he did not have a permit. It led to his being detained
and paying many fines. His undoing came in 1921 when he had an unpermitted festivity on his
boat, which an off-duty cop attended. The policeman testified that he saw girls on mens laps,
some with their skirts above their knees (Hills 26). Ringler claimed the policemans
allegations were completely false. However, Lola Baldwin still took him to court, and it ended
his career at the Cotillion. He left the Cotillion with two years remaining on his lease. He
expanded his business in 1921 and 1922, including Broadway Hall in Portland (where Portland
Center State is now located) and more in Los Angeles, CA, Longview, WA, and Eugene, OR.
Michael Ringler was a very prominent figure during the reform. He as well as
many others are recognized for starting a new era of dance. Compared to the dances now in 2015
the ones that were looked down upon then do not look so immoral. The world has been through
many phases of culture and there are bound to be countless more periods some do not agree with.
Behind every movement, ever building, every person there is a deeper history that connects us to
something greater like culture, religion, dance, music, social class, etc. This makes it not only the
buildings history but our history.

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Bibliography

Ringlers History (PDF). McMenamins. Retrieved November 2, 2015.

Oregon, Uniquely Portland, and The PDX Guy. "Crystal Ballroom Portland | Portland
Attractions." Uniquely-Portland-Oregon.com. N.p., 2013. Web. 03 Nov. 2015.

Rosman, John. "Oregon Historical Photo: The Floating Ballroom." Arts & Life. Oregon
Public Broadcasting, 21 Apr. 2014. Web. 10 Dec. 2015.

Oregonian/OregonLive, David Greenwald | The. "Tim Hills on the Crystal Ballroom's 'legendary
Shows' and 'infamous' Moments." Oregon Live. The Oregonian, 16 Jan. 2014. Web. 03 Nov.
2015.

Hills, Tim. The Many Lives of the Crystal Ballroom. Portland, Or.: McMenamins Pubs &
Breweries, 1997. Print.

Lets Dance: Social, Ballroom & Folk Dancing (Peter Buckman, Paddington Press. Ltd., New
York)

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A Municipal Mother: Portlands Lola Greene Baldwin, Americas First Policewoman (Gloria E.
Myers, Oregon State University Press, Corvallis, 19955).

"Oregon Historical Society." Oregon Historical Society. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2015.

The Oregonian 19 April 1915: 7

The Oregonian 14 October 1918: 8

The Oregon Journal 13 August 1913: 1

The Oregon Journal 26 July 1913: 1

The Oregonian Journal 11 November 1915: 1

The Oregonian Journal 5 September 1918: 1

Pictorial, Oregon: The Wonderland. Portland Press Club. 1915, page 156.

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