Terra Linda’s Starlite Club
by Laurie Thompson
In her 2012 oral history, the late Catherine Munson told us that in the early 1950s, you knew where to turn for Terra Linda when you saw “…an old, beat-up nightclub…called The Starlight Café…that was the marker.”
The Starlight Club was a vestige of the 1939 World’s Fair on Treasure Island. During the Fair it promoted Chicken of the Sea’s tuna products and housed the White Star Restaurant which served such items as “creamed tuna on toast” and “tunaburgers.”
After the Fair on Treasure Island closed, the White Star Restaurant was purchased by Gertrude Dibble who brought it to Marin in pieces and re-assembled it near the entrance to the Freitas Ranch. In 1947 Dibble reopened it as the Starlight Club.
Early advertisements for the Starlite Club promote it as a “cocktail lounge” and one advertisement invites customers to dance with Bob Edwards and his orchestra and to enjoy cocktails prepared by mixologist Gene Bellutini.
Dave Freitas who grew up on the Freitas Ranch remembers it as a bar and restaurant which later included a motel in the back.
If you have memories of the Starlite Club or the Starlite Motel, please share them with us!
Originally published at https://annetkent.kontribune.com.
