Sunny Side is excited to make its Dew Drop Jazz & Social Hall debut in late March.

$10/adult (cash preferred), Kids and students (Free).
No advanced tickets sold.

At the bar, we offer Abita beer, assorted wines, water, and sodas (cash only). Delicious plate dinners are available for purchase (cash preferred) from our next door neighbors, The Ladies of The First Free Mission Baptist Church. Fried chicken or fried fish with plenty of fixins’

Inside is first come/first serve for about 100 people, but most people sit outside so bring a lawn chair. Prohibited on the premises: no smoking, no ice chests or outside food & drinks, and no pets.

Parking is available in the lot across the street and on the streets around the area. Please be courteous and do not block the driveways of our neighbors.

This historic venue laid it’s construction in the late 1800’s following the creation of the Dew Drop Jazz and Benevolent Association. The Association, like many created among African American residents following the end of the Civil War, had chiefly benevolent goals—to care for the sick with food and attention; to provide help in funeral arrangements; to provide food for needy and temporary housing—all during a period of time when black residents could not obtain various types of insurance.

The hall on Lamarque Street, unpainted and nestled in a grove of ancient live oaks, is now considered the world’s oldest virtually unaltered rural jazz dance hall. It was built the same year that scholars agree was the year of the birth of traditional jazz in New Orleans.

It was not long after its creation that pioneer New Orleans jazz musicians were boarding steam boats in the entertainment district of Milneberg on the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain and coming across to Mandeville. By the early 1900s Mandeville was developing as a north shore lakefront resort village, and black musicians were finding a receptive audience for spirited Saturday night dances at the Dew Drop. While it now occupies a precious page in jazz history as a performance venue, the Association built the hall for many purposes—association meetings, community gatherings, parties and other functions.