Social dance: Latin, swing, country / South shore of Walled Lake (today's Pavilion Shore Park), Oakland County
Walled Lake Casino
Closed – archive entry · 1965
A former lakeside ballroom on the south shore of Walled Lake in Novi (mid-1920s–1965), where the big bands and stars of the swing era played.
01 / The story of this place
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The Walled Lake Casino, first called the 'New Casino', was built by Louis Tolletene beside the Walled Lake amusement park in the mid-1920s (1925 per the MotorCities marker, 1928 per a local history account), with a polished hardwood floor of almost 17,000 square feet. Weekend crowds from Detroit caused bumper-to-bumper traffic, and live radio broadcasts made it nationally famous: Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, Guy Lombardo, the Dorsey Brothers, Red Nichols, Les Brown, Harry James, Vaughn Monroe and Lawrence Welk played there, and it was ranked with the great ballrooms of New York and Chicago. Closed during World War II by gasoline rationing, it reopened in 1946, became a teen dance hall by the late 1950s and later hosted Chuck Berry, the Four Seasons and Stevie Wonder, before burning to the ground on Christmas night 1965, shortly after being renamed Club A-Go-Go.
- Hardwood floor of almost 17,000 sq ft
- Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong
- Burned down on Christmas night 1965
Sources & fact check · Checked: 2026-09-25
An independently written bilingual guide. This collection is not an attendance-based ranking.
03 / Events
Events at this place
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