Aragon Ballroom
Santa Monica, California

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Built in the 1920's on Lick Pier in Pacific Ocean Park.
Closed in 1943.
Destroyed by fire in 1970.
Lawrence Welk started there.
Swing movies were filmed there.
Pacific Ocean Park was an early version of Disneyland, with many rides and attractions.

On May 18, 1951, Klaus Landsberg created and directed what became the "Lawrence Welk Show", which was televised every Friday night at 9:00 P.M. from the Aragon Ballroom.

Source: Quote by mufeedah
"The once-elegant ballroom had grown seedy by the early 1950s, at which time it enjoyed a brief revival as the location of early Lawrence Welk show broadcasts. In the 1960s, the Aragon was again revamped under a different name as a short-lived rock concert venue - with appearances by Alice Cooper (is his pre-Cooper days) and Jim Morrison of the Doors. It was destroyed by fire shortly afterward."

Source: Wikipedia
The Aragon was best known as the hall where Lawrence Welk and his big band, the "Champagne Music Makers," parlayed a scheduled six-week engagement in the late 1940s into a ten-year stint and a legendary television show. Welk's orchestra played to crowds numbering as high as 7,000. Local station KTLA began broadcasting a weekly show live from the Aragon featuring Welk's big band. The show evolved into The Lawrence Welk Show, broadcast each Saturday night on ABC and later in syndication for more than three decades.
The opening date of the Venice Beach Aragon is unclear, and may be lost to the ages. The Welk show left the Aragon for a television studio in Hollywood in the mid-1950s, and the hall went into decline. It was demolished sometime in the 1960s.