Soldiers built this wood-frame building in 1940-1941 as a Post Exchange for Camp Blanding in Starke. William and Eunice Perryman, who owned a grocery store on East Depot Avenue, later SE 7th Avenue, in Gainesville’s Springhill community, bought it in 1946, moved it closer to their store, and opened it as the Perry Theater for African Americans only. A cement projection room was added to the building’s north end because theaters storing celluloid movie film were required to have one, but the theater operated only from 1948-1949 before closing as African Americans in Gainesville also patronized the all-black Lincoln and Rose theaters on Seminary Lane, NW 5th Avenue, in a thriving black commercial district. Afterward, Sarah McKnight, an African American entrepreneur, and her husband Charles turned the building into the Cotton Club, named after the famous Harlem speakeasy and nightclub. The Gainesville Cotton Club sold food and alcoholic drinks and offered live music and dancing, hosting African American performers working the Chitlin’ Circuit; according to the McKnights, entertainers who appeared there and later achieved broader fame included James Brown, B.B. King, Ray Charles, Brook Benton, and Bo Diddley. In 1952 the City of Gainesville refused to renew the club’s liquor license, ending its lively run. From 1953-1959 the building housed the Blue Note Club, which featured a jukebox and beer but never matched the Cotton Club’s popularity. After the Blue Note Club closed in the late 1950s, the building was used as a furniture warehouse until 1970 and then stood vacant. In 1995 it and five other buildings on the site were sold to Mt. Olive African Methodist Episcopal Church, and in 1997 the Cotton Club Museum and Cultural Center Board was established to oversee restoration of the original club building. The board was incorporated in 2005, received non-profit status in 2007, and the building’s reconstruction was completed with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on November 11, 2018.
