Being a long time jazzhead, and a social scientist with a strong inclination for the visual, I’m not surprised I designed a map of jazz clubs in Harrisburg, PA. Making few queries on local Facebook groups, and pursuing some conversations with our regional jazz society, turned up a good bit of information on where these clubs were, and who headlined at them.

The history of jazz in Harrisburg is pretty rich for a small, central Pennsylvania city. Although that’s a 21st century bias. Seventy-five years ago jazz was more popular, and Harrisburg was more vibrant (it’s slowly regaining steam today).

Many jazz musicians suffered racist policies when jazz was king. When Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington came to town, they had leave the finer venues they performed in and sleep in hotels listed in the day’s “green books” that identified hotels that catered to African Americans. Both the venues (like the Madrid Palestra Ballroom), and the hotel that African Americans boarded at (the Jackson Hotel) are shown in the map below.

At least twenty different jazz venues lined Harrisburg’s streets across the decades.