The Island, once accessible only by footbridges, was the center of life at Idlewild from the 1910s into the 1960s. Early advertisements for the resort described Island Park as having a beautiful bathing beach and a small parlor or clubhouse on the east shore. Built in 1916, the parlor was the social hub. By 1923, the Idlewild Resort Company boasted that the island had a dance pavilion, saddle horses, a new 62-room hotel, and a cottage city of 29 sleeping cottages, which locals called doghouses because of their small size. During the 1930s and 1940s, entrepreneur Virgil Williams ran a hotel and nightclub there, and Detroiter Phil Giles purchased them in the 1940s. For about 20 years, Giles's savvy marketing of Idlewild's nightlife drew audiences from the Midwest and beyond. Phil Giles opened the Flamingo Club in 1955, and a 1956 Chicago Defender article classed it with the top nighteries in the nation. As early as the 1920s, resorters had many evening activities, including card parties and dances. By the 1930s, the island's clubhouse had been renovated as the Idlewild Club Casino. During the next 30 years, venues like the Paradise Club and El Morocco featured top African American entertainers, including Sarah Vaughan, Jackie Wilson, and the Four Tops. Idlewild's club scene declined in the 1960s, in part because the Civil Rights Act of 1964 provided equal access to employment and public places and expanded opportunities for black entertainers and audiences alike. The Flamingo closed by 1968.