The Black Hawk jazz club was located on the corner of Turk Street and Hyde Street in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District and operated from 1949 to 1963. The building was later demolished and the site is now a small parking lot. A plaque in the sidewalk reads:
On this corner, the world’s best jazz musicians performed at the Blackhawk. The club’s legacy lives in recordings made here by Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, Cal Tjader, Thelonious Monk and Ahmad Jamal, among others. Billie Holliday, Dizzie Gillespie, Charles Mingus, Count Basie, The Modern Jazz Quartet and other legends played on its stage. The Blackhawk in later years accommodated underage patrons in a special section behind chicken wire.
