NIGHTCLUB - Dinner On the Rocks

As early as 1912 nightclubs and hotels seeking something unique to entice customers hit on a real crowd pleaser - ice skaters on small portable rinks called “tanks”.   The first permanent tank was installed in 1914 in Chicago at the Hotel Sherman’s College Inn. The next year a small ice show was staged in the Roof Garden of New York’s Shubert’s 44th St. Theatre as Charlotte’s fame was spreading from the Hippodrome Theatre.

Skating became the rage and tank shows sprang up in hotels in Cleveland, Kansas City, and the Café Bristol in Los Angeles. The Chicago Morrison Hotel installed their own ice show to rival The Sherman’s established skaters.  Prohibition melted them all in 1920.
 

Speakeasies did have ice - just not large enough to skate on.
 

After repeal in 1933, small scale ice entertainment surged back to life in swank theatre restaurants at such posh hotels as New York‘s St. Regis, Boston’s Copley-Plaza, Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin, the Nicolett in Minneapolis, and the New Orleans’ Roosevelt. Several famous hotels had hugely successful, long-running Ice Shows. The Chicago Stevens (later Conrad Hilton), The Adolphus in Dallas, The Sheraton as well as Jack Valentines Restaurant in Ft Lauderdale, and The New Yorker in New York City each presented exceptional ice entertainment for as long as twenty years.

The famed French cabaret Lido de Paris has included an exciting ice skating act in their spectacular productions since 1952. Visitors to Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe, Reno, and Atlantic City have also had many opportunities to enjoy excellent tank ice shows with such stars as Sonja Henie, Tai & Randy, Scott Hamilton, Peggy Fleming, Toller Cranton, and Dorothy Hamill. As recently as 2006 Lily Langtrys Restaurant and Showplace in Valley Forge, PA carried on the great dining-with-skaters tradition with its excellent Ice Productions.

Nightclubs as far afield as Japan, Malaysia, Lebanon, Australia, and Korea have found skating acts and ice shows to be hugely popular with International patrons.