Asbury Park Convention Hall — Bruce Springsteen

Asbury Park Convention Hall on the New Jersey shore is one of the most storied venues in the history of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Built in 1930 as part of a grand Beaux Arts complex including the attached casino building, the convention hall is a landmark of the Asbury Park boardwalk that Springsteen played repeatedly throughout the 1970s and into later decades. The city of Asbury Park and its boardwalk music scene — the Stone Pony club, the fast food joints on Kingsley Street, the bars where Springsteen and Clarence Clemons developed their sound — are the physical world from which the Greetings from Asbury Park album and much of the Born to Run mythology emerged.

Asbury Park had been a prosperous resort town in the early twentieth century but had fallen into severe decline following racial unrest and economic abandonment from the late 1960s onward. Springsteen's music documented the ruined grandeur and the stubborn humanity of the people who stayed — the lovers on the beach, the dreamers in the cars, the musicians playing to whoever would listen. His attachment to Asbury Park was genuine and sustained, and the city's long decline and slow revival have tracked in parallel with his career.

Asbury Park Convention Hall is an active venue and community space. It has been restored in recent decades as part of a broader revitalisation of the Asbury Park boardwalk. Springsteen has returned to play there over the years, and the city celebrates its most famous musical association with considerable enthusiasm. The Stone Pony, the club on Ocean Avenue where Springsteen played many early shows, continues to operate as a live music venue.