Gate of Horn
*The Gate of Horn is celebrated on this date in 1957. This was a folk music club located in the basement of the Rice Hotel at 755 N. Dearborn St. on the north side of Chicago, Illinois.
Journalists Les Brown and Albert Grossman opened it in 1956. It was where Odetta, Bob Gibson, Ella Jenkins, Roger McGuinn, and others made their name. McGuinn later wrote the song "Gate of Horn" about the venue and how it affected him. Also appearing at the club were Theodore Bikel, Josh White, Oscar Brown, Jo Mapes, Brownie McGhee, Sonny Terry, Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, the New Lost City Ramblers, Judy Collins, Hoyt Axton, Jim Croce, and Bonnie Dobson. Bill Cosby and George Carlin also performed as comedians at the club.
Studs Terkel interviewed many of those who performed at the Gate of Horn for his radio show Studs Terkel's Wax Museum, which also helped build the folk music revival in Chicago. The Gate of Horn moved to a larger venue on Rush Street near Oak. When the Gate of Horn folded, its space was filled for several years by Second City. The original Gate of Horn site is now a hi-rise rental apartment building; a similar fate befell the building that last housed the 1950s and 1960s free-speech coffee house "The College of Complexes," which was at 515 N. Clark Street—a few short blocks away.
