‘People are still talking about it’: Arlington Heights museum to commemorate The Cellar music club

The original brick and mortar caverned confines of a long lost teen music club that welcomed the likes of The Who, Buffalo Springfield, Steppenwolf and Three Dog Night to Arlington Heights still stands.

And even though the vacant three-story office building at 116 W. Eastman St. is set to be razed soon for a planned six-story, 135-unit apartment building, The Cellar still exists in the music and memories of those of a certain age who came of age in the suburbs.

That’s what led officials at the nearby Arlington Heights Historical Museum to organize an upcoming open mic event for people to reminisce about the club, its bands and that time in their lives.

At “Tell Your Cellar Story,” from 2 to 4 p.m. Saturday, museum curators are also set to formally announce plans for an exhibit about the iconic music club, which will include an immersive re-creation of the old place.

Its first primary location — in the basement of what had been the old activities building of St. Peter Lutheran Church — opened in 1965. After quickly outgrowing that space, The Cellar moved across the railroad tracks in 1966 to a warehouse at Salem Avenue and Davis Street.

“It closed in 1970, and people are still talking about it,” said Jeff Anderson, the museum’s director. “It had some long-lasting impact on not just Arlington Heights, but music as a whole.”

Among those scheduled to take the mic is Paul Sampson, the club owner and promoter who has been helping Anderson with exhibit preparations through his oral histories and vivid memories.

One of the stories he told is how he brought Cream — then at the height of their popularity — to the club on April 26, 1968. The trio from England happened to be in the area after a Winnetka man flew them in to play a show for his daughter’s birthday.

“Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Jack Bruce, Mr. Ginger Baker, Mr. Eric Clapton. I give you, the Cream,” Sampson recalled to the Daily Herald in April 2023. “We had probably close to 1,800 people jamming the floors. I couldn’t get off the stage after I introduced them, so I stood about that far from Eric Clapton for about an hour.”

Anderson has also been in touch with members of bands who performed there — maybe not Clapton — but the club did host and cultivate talent of a number of local garage bands.

Some of them are featured on an album of rare deep tracks that pays homage to the old Northwest suburban teen hangout. Released a year ago on Villa Park-based Cheap Kiss Records, “A Blast From The Cellar! Lost Gems From The ’60s Garage Rock Explosion” is sold in the museum’s gift shop.

“We’re actually selling more than we thought, so we’ve had to call (them) back twice to restock us,” Anderson said.

Interest in that album and frequent questions about The Cellar’s history is what spurred Anderson to plan the upcoming storytelling session and exhibit, which should be open by May, he said.

The museum campus at 110 W. Fremont St. — which includes the 1882 Victorian house of Frederick Müller and his 1906 soda pop factory — features a number of displays about Arlington Heights’ early pioneer days.

Anderson, who was hired a year ago to modernize some of the exhibits, said that while he won’t deviate too far from that core history, history also “doesn’t mean 300 years ago.”

He hopes former employees and concertgoers of The Cellar still have photographs, clothes, instruments and other memorabilia they’d be willing to loan or donate for the exhibit. Plans are to tell the story of what the place meant to different groups: those who played there, those who worked there, and those who listened and danced.

Anderson is already thinking of how he will try to re-create The Cellar in one of the museum galleries.

“I love immersive. That’s like my favorite type of an experience,” he said. “It’s going to be painted and graffitied and just every way we can try to make it look like what The Cellar looked like. We’re kind of hoping that when people come in, they’re going to be like, ‘Oh, this is what it looked like.’ And if I hear that, then I think we’ll have done a good job.”

cplacek@dailyherald.com