Red Bank’s Landmarked Count Basie Center for the Arts Celebrates 100 Years

In the heart of downtown Red Bank, the Count Basie Center for the Arts is celebrating its 100-year anniversary this November. The theater has been hosting events leading up to this centennial celebration for over a year. From 100 Years of Soul, Sound and Stories, a project created to collect and share personal histories of community members, to a newly installed outdoor Walk of Fame (with the most recent addition being Springsteen’s bandmember Steve Van Zandt), these are just a few of the celebratory happenings at the Count Basie.

This historic venue, originally called the Reade’s Carlton Theater, opened as a film and vaudeville house on November 11, 1926. For the next 40 years, it thrived hosting musical concerts, films, and theatrical productions however by the late 60s the theater fell into disrepair and the doors closed.

In 1971, with funding from the Junior League of Monmouth County and New Jersey State Council on the Arts, as well as a significant amount from an anonymous donor, the theater was saved and reopened as the Monmouth Arts Center.  In August 1974, just months after Rolling Stone magazine proclaimed him the future of rock and roll, local musician Bruce Springsteen and his E Street Band took the stage, and then again made headlines with a “homecoming” concert a year later.

Long before Springsteen however, there was another area musician, jazz great William “Count” Basie, who grew up in Red Bank just a few blocks away. In 1961, weeks after performing for President John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, Basie had a homecoming performance of his own at the historic theater and came back several times after that. In November 1984, six months after the jazz legend’s death, the Monmouth Arts Center was renamed after Count Basie, then wholly recognized as Red Bank’s honored son.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, a significant restoration was completed in 2008, funded in part by a performance by Springsteen and the E-Street Band. The project restored the theater to its original, neoclassical revival façade with Spanish-influence interior. Since then, the Basie has established itself as a nonprofit organization with a mission to serve the people of the State of New Jersey by providing a broad spectrum of quality entertainment and education programs that embrace and amplify the diversity of the region.

Earlier this year, on the anniversary of William “Count” Basie’s birth, the street in front of the theater was officially renamed as “Count Basie Way” and the New Jersey Black Heritage Trail unveiled a marker designating the institute as an official stop. The Black Heritage Trail was authorized by state legislation in 2022 and now features dozens of markers statewide, recognizing sites of Black struggle, resilience and achievement.

Click to see vignette narrated by Jon Stewart