Cocoanut Club Fire

The Tragic Story of America’s Deadliest Nightclub Fire

BY ERIN BLAKEMORE // NOVEMBER 27, 2017 Smoke pours from the Cocoanut Grove night club during the fire of Nov. 28, 1942 in the Back Bay section of Boston. (Credit: AP Photo)

Smoke pours from the Cocoanut Grove night club during the fire of Nov. 28, 1942 in the Back Bay section of Boston. (Credit: AP Photo)

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Movie stars. Artificial palm trees. Big band music. The night of November 28, 1942, promised all the glamour and glitz that made Boston’s most famous night spot, The Cocoanut Grove, legendary. That night, about a thousand revelers gathered to drink and dance the night away.

Just hours later, the club would be no more, reduced to a smoldering husk by a five-alarm fire. Nearly

But then they cleared his name, saying that the cause of the fire could not be pinpointed. Today, historians think the fire was fueled by a faulty air conditioning system that pumped highly flammable gas into the nightclub during the blaze. Welansky’s greed—from the cheap materials to the shoddy wiring and inferior repairs at the club—seems to have been largely responsible for the fire’s immense death toll. He was convicted of 19 counts of manslaughter for his negligence.

One of the victims of the Cocoanut Grove fire being carried out to safety. (Credit: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)

One of the victims of the Cocoanut Grove fire being carried out to safety. (Credit: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)

In the aftermath, officials learned that the building had been given a “good” fire rating the week before the blaze. The fire itself led to changes in fire law. States like Massachusetts now require buildings to have clearly marked exits and outward swinging doors, and forbid revolving doors as the main entrance of a building without nearby doors. Likewise, highly flammable decorations like the ones used by Welansky are now

“I’ve suffered enough—[been] spit on, called every name in the book and threatened,” he told a reporter in 1972. Tomaszewski visited the graves of the people who died in the fire often, and carried the stigma of his involvement with the nightclub for the rest of his life. As for Welansky, he served a few years in prison. He died soon after he was pardoned by Governor Maurice J. Tobin of Massachusetts—the very mayor whose patronage Welansky had enjoyed at the time of the fire.

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