Dance Party at the Odd Fellows Hall

N.J. Abele took this picture of a large group of people at a dance at the Odd Fellows Hall about 1912. A few people were identified in notes on the back of the original picture:

The couple at the bottom of this close up view appear to adore each other:

The people at the party were dressed in formal attire.

Some of the ladies wore flowers or ribbons in their hair.

The upper level of the Odd Fellows Hall was the site of many dances in twentieth century Sandusky.

Cotillion Soiree Held in 1850

At the top of the invitation to the Cotillion Soiree held on December 11, 1850 at the Townsend House in Sandusky is a portion of a poem by Milton.  It reads:

Come, and trip it as you go,

On the light fantastic toe.

(From this poem, to “trip the light fantastic” became a way of describing dancing.)  

The Townsend House, which opened in the 1840s, was at the northwest corner of Market and Decatur Streets.

A young Rush R. Sloane was one of the floor managers of the Cotillion Soiree. He would later go on to build the Sloane House hotel, and serve as Mayor of Sandusky. He was also known for his bold abolitionist views and actions during the time of the Underground Railroad.

image from the Internet Archive

Other floor managers of the Soiree were: John W. Wetherell and G.J. Francisco. Honorary managers were Ebenezer B. Sadler, E.S. Flint, Pitt Cooke, J.G. Camp, Jr., J.E. Follett, and Theodore Hosmer. These were some of the earliest and best known pioneer residents of Sandusky. Visit the Sandusky Library Archives Research to learn more about the history of Sandusky and Erie County, Ohio.

Do You Remember the Pony Tail?

This view of the dance floor at the Pony Tail appeared in the advertisement section of the 1967 Sandusky High School Fram.

The Pony Tail opened in the fall of 1966 as a non-alcoholic teenage night club, located at 241 Jackson Street. An article in the October 8, 1966 issue of the Sandusky Register stated that Kermit Price had the idea for a teen dance club for Sandusky. There was a strict code of conduct that included no alcoholic beverages, no extremely long hair, and a minimum age of 15 to be admitted to the Pony Tail. Dress was to be “neat casual.”  

In October of 1966, a Greyhound charter bus picked up teens at the Pony Tail on Saturday nights at 8 p.m. and took them to the Note in Ruggles Beach. The bus returned at midnight, and the fare was fifty cents. Bands usually played on Friday nights at the Pony Tail. The Choir sang their hit song “It’s Cold Outside” at the Pony Tail in the spring of 1967. A staff member of the Sandusky Library recalls hearing the band play there. She stated that the Pony Tail was a fun place to meet young people from lots of other schools in the area. 

The advertisement below listed the top hits at both the Pony Tail and the Note in the May 3, 1967 issue of the Sandusky Register.

The group known as the Music Explosion (from Galion, Ohio) played at the Pony Tail in September of 1967. They were best known for their recording of the song Little Bit of Soul, which reached #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart in that same year. 

This advertisement ran in the Sandusky Register on November 29, 1968

By March of 1969, the First Presbyterian Church had purchased the building to be remodeled to house Christian education and fellowship facilities for the church. Care and Share of Erie County is now located at the site of the former Pony Tail Teen Club.