Avalon Ballroom, Music venue in Polk Gulch, San Francisco, United States

Avalon Ballroom occupied the two top floors of the 1911 building at 1268 Sutter Street, entered from doors on Sutter Street. Inside, an L-shaped second-floor balcony ran along the south and west walls, with the dance floor before an elevated stage in the northeast corner. The hall measured roughly 24 to 30 m by 49 to 55 m and held up to 500 people. The facade is painted dark grey, with arched windows and a sculpted face between the arches.

The building at 1268 Sutter Street was built in 1911 to designs by architect Alfred Henry Jacobs. By 1915 it housed Puckett's College of Dancing, and by the 1930s a public dance hall called the Avalon Ball Room operated there five nights a week. From 1966 to 1969 Chet Helms and Family Dog Productions booked the concerts; the venue lost its lease in 1968, became the Regency II movie theater in 1969, and was restored for concerts from 2002 to 2005.

The Avalon's name came from a public dance hall called the Avalon Ball Room that operated at 1268 Sutter Street by the 1930s, hosting popular and old-fashioned dances five times a week. In the 1960s Chet Helms and Family Dog Productions booked bands there Thursday to Saturday, with psychedelic posters by Rick Griffin, Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley and Victor Moscoso, and light shows by Diogenes Lantern Works. Big Brother and the Holding Company, organized around Janis Joplin in spring 1966, played there.

The ballroom occupied the two top floors of the 1911 building, entered through doors on Sutter Street. Inside, an L-shaped balcony ran along the south and west walls, with the dance floor in front of a stage in the northeast corner. The room measured roughly 24 to 30 m by 49 to 55 m, and the stage was 12 to 15 m wide. The space now serves other uses, so it cannot be visited as a ballroom.

The Avalon's posters were drawn by Rick Griffin, Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley and Victor Moscoso, and a light show often came from Diogenes Lantern Works. The Grateful Dead played here at least twenty-nine times between 1966 and 1969, recording Vintage Dead and Historic Dead in autumn 1966 and two tracks of Live/Dead in early 1969.