Back in September. West Warwick, RI broke ground on a memorial to commemorate 100 victims of the infamous fire at The Station nightclub back in 2003. But on this day in Boston history, The Hub fell victim to a similar tragedy on a much larger scale. On November 28, 1942 the Cocoanut Grove nightclub was set ablaze, killing 492 victims, more people than the capacity for the building.
Located in what is now the quiet, cozy neighborhood of Bay Village, Cocoanut Grove was a one and a half-story tall lounge, full of decorations intended to give partygoers a tropical, easygoing atmosphere. These flammable props, coupled with severely lacking fire codes that owner Barney Welansky was able to violate through his criminal connections, and the fact that Welansky had bolted up numerous doors and exits to keep customers from leaving without paying.
A retrospective article by the Boston Globe in 1992 suggests that the fire was started when a busboy, looking to screw in a lightbulb, had lit a match to locate the socket. Somehow, the match caught one of the synthetic, decorative palm trees or bamboo chutes, immediately spreading the fire throughout the building’s entirety. It spread so quickly, in fact, that investigators found deceased corpses still sitting and holding their drinks.
The report filed by the Fire Commissioner William Arthur Reilly (available in full below) disputes the precise origin of the fire, thought to have come from the busboy’s match, rendering the direct cause unable to determine. However, it does note the astounding lack of up-to-date fire codes and lack of exits. People were forced to congest at the single, oneway revolving door at the entrance or the inward swinging rear door that was near impossible to open as the mass of the crowd pushed against it conversely.
Welansky was eventually sentenced to 12 to 15 years for manslaughter, serving only four but ruing his existence. The same Globe article notes that in the twilight of his life, he wished he had perished with the nearly 500 unlucky victims – many of whom were servicemen from World War II home on holiday leave to be with friends and family.
Remembered as the single deadliest nightclub fire in American history – second deadliest building fire after the 1903 Iroquois Theatre fire in Chicago tragically took the lives of 602 – it, like the Great Boston Fire of 1872, was responsible for Massachusetts and states across the union to revamp their fire and safety codes. In Boston in particular, medical advances also took place at Massachusetts General Hospital where the first blood bank was put to use, penicillin was used as an antibiotic, and severe burns were treated with soft gauze covered with petroleum jelly.
On this Thanksgiving day, we salute the Boston Fire Department and firefighters around the country for their hard work and dedication. Those victims may all be gone, but they’re not soon forgotten.
