Stephen Dean

Historic Dance Halls of East Central Texas (Images of America (Arcadia Publishing)) Stephen Dean

Texas dance halls are iconic structures that have played a prominent role in the states culture from its earliest stages. They became central institutions in the earliest European settlements and provided these immigrant communities with a common, central space in which to build new ways of life in a new land. The settlement patterns of the mostly German, Czech, Polish, and other central European migrants of this period gave East Central Texas the states greatest concentration of dance halls. Thousands of these halls were built throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, but at present, their numbers have dwindled considerably, and many are at risk.