St Louis, Missouri, has played an important role in the history of jazz in America. Musicians came north from New Orleans where jazz began, and soon the city was swinging to this uniquely American musical genre.

The Jefferson Hotel in St Louis, Missouri, had a Jazz Age ballroom that celebrated the 1920s and 1930s when jazz music and dance styles were gaining worldwide popularity. You can see old pictures of the ballroom on the internet – there were white marble staircases, sweeping balconies and gold fittings.

Over the decades, performers at the Jefferson included Miles Davis, Count Basie, Duke Ellington and local legend Clark Terry, a trumpeter who pioneered the flugelhorn in jazz and became a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master. He died in 2015.

The historic hotel had opened in 1904 to coincide with the Louisiana Purchase Exposition that drew 20 million visitors from all over the world to marvel at new scientific and cultural discoveries.

The Jefferson, which takes up a whole block in downtown St Louis, closed in 2006 but is currently undergoing restoration and will come back as a hotel and apartments complex.

This menu is from the 1960s when the hotel was owned by Sheraton and jazz was played in the Boulevard Room.