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East St. Louis Mound Center, View from the Southwest. The ancient city of East St. Louis once had an estimated 50 mounds

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The 1896 St. Louis-East St. Louis tornado is an historic tornado event that occurred on Wednesday, May 27

1917 riot in East St. Louis Illinois.

A hundred negros were killed and more than 60 homes burned.

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Young dancers of the Performing Arts Training Center (PATC), East St. Louis

Obear Nestor Glass Co East St Louis IL Boys Worker 1910

Dunham dancers Linda McKinley and Darryl Braddix dancing on train tracks in East St. Louis

Mob Stopping Street Car, East St. Louis Riot, July 2, 1917

East St. Louis Nightclub Fire Destroys Ike & Tina Turner Landmark

By Tom Finkel Mon., Feb. 1 2010 at 1:25 PM

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Last Friday the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published a brief story about a vacant East St. Louis nightclub that had been gutted by fire early that morning.

The club had gone by various names over the years but was known most recently as Four Aces.

"It's been vacant for the last couple months and they had break-ins by copper thieves," said East St. Louis Fire Chief Thomas Grimmett.

Dan Zettwoch

The nightclub, located on East Broadway (that's the street the Eads Bridge turns into on the Illinois side), has a prominent place in St. Louis-area music history.

"Broadway winds east from downtown, and within a few blocks the vibe is considerably more country than city. Many of the theaters, clubs and restaurants, long neglected, have crumbled and died," then-staff writer Randall Roberts wrote in a Riverfront Times feature story back in 2005.

"But the Four Aces lives on, a brick single-story at 1312 Broadway that still houses a liquor store in the front and a bar in the back. The other half of the building is devoted to a stage, a dance floor and rows of tables and chairs. The Disco Riders, a 32-member motorcycle club, own and operate the club, and on Saturday nights host dance parties."

Back in the 1950s and '60s, the Four Aces was the Manhattan Club, and it was at the Manhattan Club that a teenage groupie named Annie Mae Bullock met a twentysomething dandy named Ike Turner.

Writes Roberts:

"Turner used to tool around in a Buick Dynaflow crammed with young girls and musical instruments, recalls East St. Louis poet laureate Eugene Redmond. Turner would inevitably land at the Manhattan, where he'd practice and perform.

"Annie Mae would someday become Tina Turner. 'She was a teeny-bopper and a groupie,' Redmond remembers. The future superstar used to hang around the Manhattan while her future husband was practicing. 'Ike was known to run through women,' he laughs. 'Leon Thomas [who later gained fame as the yodeler on Pharoah Sanders' glorious "The Creator Has a Master Plan"] gave him the name, "Ike Turner, the Woman Burner."'"

The Woman Burner, of course, is dead, hounded in later life -- and, still, in death -- with his reputation for woman-beating, as opposed to -burning. Now whatever secrets the Manhattan Club may have held are charred or obliterated.

According to press accounts, the state fire marshal is investigating the blaze.

Roberts' story, "Arch Madness, a tour of the Four Aces and other local musical landmarks, is available on RFT's archive, right here.

Built St. Louis > > East St. Louis > > Downtown

Collinsville Avenue & Missouri Avenue - August 2001. August 2001.	Collinsville Avenue remains the town's commercial center, lined with businesses tenaciously clinging to life, such as this discount store which moved in when the local Walgreen's closed up shop. The corner store has since closed down.
Collinsville Avenue - November 2007. Collinsville Avenue & Missouri Avenue - August 2001. Collinsville Avenue & Missouri Avenue - August 2001.	Two circa-1920s bank buildings stand opposite one another on Collinsville Avenue. The first is still in use as a bank; the second was recently vacated by Union Bank. Together with the former Walgreens building across from them, they form a very nicely-handled streetscape where these two important roads meet.