Location: Chicago, Illinois
Home Court: Eighth Regiment Armory, Savoy Ballroom (Chicago)
Nickname: “Savoys”
Colors: Black, White
Manager: Dick Hudson, Al Monroe
Midway through the 1926-27 basketball season, on February 12, 1927, the dancehall development company Associated Ballrooms, Inc., builders and owners of mega-sized facilities including the Savoy (Harlem) and Roseland (midtown Manhattan) Ballrooms in New York City, made a big announcement.
They had signed a 30-year, one million dollar lease of an entire South Side of Chicago city block, on South Parkway Boulevard (now Martin Luther King Drive) at 47th Street, where within a month construction would begin on another “monster” ballroom also to be known as Savoy.[1]
The company’s owner, I. Jay Faggen, claimed that the Chicago Savoy would be bigger than any other ballroom in the country. Its façade would be built in a Moorish architectural style, while its interior space, to be decorated in Louis XIV period style, would measure 500 by 300 feet and would be able to accommodate up to 7,500 dancers.
With this news, enterprising African American nightclub promoter Dick “Baby Face” Hudson, who managed and coached an all-black basketball squad known as the Giles Post American Legion Five, approached Faggen with a deal to rename his team the Savoy Big Five.