The Cocoanut Grove fire was a nightclub fire in Boston, Massachusetts, US on November 28, 1942, which resulted in the deaths of 492 people. It is the deadliest nightclub fire in history and the third-deadliest single-building fire in the United States (after the September 11 attacks and Iroquois Theatre fire). The Cocoanut Grove was one of Boston's most popular nightspots, attracting many celebrity visitors. It was owned by Barnet "Barney" Welansky, who was closely connected to the Mafia and Mayor Maurice J. Tobin. Fire regulations had been flouted; some exit doors had been locked to prevent unauthorized entry, and the elaborate palm tree décor contained flammable materials. The air conditioning system was filled with a flammable gas because of the wartime shortage of nonflammable Freon.
During the first Thanksgiving weekend since the U.S. had entered World War II, the Grove was filled to more than twice its legal capacity. The initial source of ignition is not definitely known, but the fire was accelerated by methyl chloride venting from the air conditioning unit. Flames and smoke spread rapidly through all areas of the club, and people could not escape quickly because of the locked exit doors. Blame was directed at Welansky for violation of standards; he served nearly four years in jail before being released just weeks before his death.
Local hospitals were especially well-prepared to treat the casualties, having been rehearsing emergency drills in response to possible wartime attacks on the East Coast. The crisis demonstrated the value of the recently-installed blood banks, and stimulated important advances in the treatment of burn victims. Following the fire, many new laws were enacted for public establishments, including the banning of flammable decorations, a provision that emergency exits must be kept unlocked (from the inside), and that revolving doors cannot be the only exit.
Club
The Cocoanut Grove opened as a partnership between orchestra leaders Mickey Alpert and Jacques Renard in 1927 during Prohibition at 17 Piedmont Street in the Bay Village neighborhood of Boston, spanning from Piedmont Street to Shawmut Street. It became a speakeasy as Alpert and Renard's Mafia-connected financiers gained control, and the club had a reputation as a gangland hangout. Although neither Alpert nor Renard held an interest in the club by 1942, Alpert was leading the house band on the night of the fire.
Gangland boss and bootlegger Charles "King" Solomon, also known as "Boston Charlie", owned the club from 1931 until he was gunned down in the men's room of Roxbury's Cotton Club nightclub in 1933. Ownership passed to his lawyer Barnet "Barney" Welansky, who sought a more mainstream image for the club, while privately boasting of his ties to the mob and Boston Mayor Maurice J. Tobin. Welansky was known to be a tough boss who ran a tight ship, hiring teenagers as busboys for low wages and street toughs to double as waiters and bouncers. He locked exits, concealed others with draperies, and even bricked up one emergency exit to prevent customers from leaving without paying.
Originally a garage and warehouse complex, the brick and concrete buildings that constituted the Cocoanut Grove had been converted to a one-and-a-half-story meandering complex of dining rooms, bars, and lounges. A lounge in an adjoining building had opened the week before the fire. The club offered its patrons dining and dancing in a South Seas-like "tropical paradise" with a roof that could be rolled back in summer for dancing under the stars. The decor consisted of leatherette, rattan and bamboo coverings on the walls, heavy draperies, and dark blue satin canopies and covering on ceilings. Support columns in the main dining area were made to look like palm trees, with light fixtures made to look like coconuts. The theme was continued in the basement Melody Lounge, with what little light there was provided by palm tree light fixtures.
Background
The "Grove" had become one of Boston's most popular nightspots, featuring a restaurant and dancing in the main area, floor shows, and piano-playing entertainers in the Melody Lounge. Visiting movie stars and singers would have their entry announced by the maître d'. The "Caricature Bar" featured renditions of prominent guests. The club had expanded eastward with the newly completed Broadway Lounge, which opened onto adjacent Broadway between Piedmont and Shawmut Streets.
Wall coverings and decorative materials had been approved on the basis of tests for ordinary ignition, which showed resistance to combustion from sources such as matches and cigarettes. Decorative cloth was purportedly treated with fire retardant ammonium sulfate upon installation, but there was no documentation that the treatment was maintained at the required intervals. The air-conditioning freon refrigerant had been replaced with the flammable gas methyl chloride because of a wartime shortage.
On the day of the fire College of the Holy Cross football team beat Boston College, causing the Boston College celebration party scheduled for the Cocoanut Grove that evening to be canceled. Mayor Tobin, a Boston College fan, also canceled his plans to go to the Grove. Female impersonator Arthur Blake was a headlining act that night. It is estimated that more than 1,000 people were crammed into the space rated for a maximum of 460. On the night of the fire, Welansky was recovering from a heart attack at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Fire
Official reports state that the fire started around 10:15 pm in the Melody Lounge. Goody Goodelle, a young pianist and singer, was performing on a revolving stage surrounded by artificial palm trees. The lounge was lit by low-powered light bulbs in coconut-styled sconces beneath the fronds. A young man, possibly a soldier, had unscrewed a light bulb to give himself and his date privacy while kissing. Stanley Tomaszewski, a 16-year-old busboy, was instructed to put the light back on by tightening the bulb. He stepped up onto a chair to reach the light in the darkened corner. Unable to see the bulb, he lit a match to illuminate the area, tightened the bulb, and extinguished the match. Immediately afterward, witnesses first saw flames in the fronds, which were just below the ceiling. Though the lit match had been close to the fronds where the fire was seen to begin, the official report determined that Tomaszewski's actions could not be found to be the source of the fire, which "will be entered into the records of this department as being of unknown origin."
Despite waiters' efforts to douse the fire with water, it spread along the fronds of the palm tree decoration. In a final desperate attempt to separate the burning fronds from the fabric-covered false ceiling, the decoration was pulled away from the corner, taking with it a triangular plywood panel at the ceiling level and opening the enclosed space above the false ceiling. The fire then spread to the false ceiling, which rapidly burned, showering patrons with sparks and burning shreds of fabric. Flames raced up the stairway to the main level, with embers landing on patrons fleeing up the stairs. A fireball burst through the front entryway and spread through the remaining club areas, through the adjacent Caricature Bar, down a corridor to the Broadway Lounge, and across the central restaurant and dance floor, as the orchestra was beginning its evening show. Flames raced faster than patrons could move, followed by thick clouds of smoke. Within five minutes, flames and smoke had spread to the entire nightclub. Some patrons were instantly overcome by smoke as they sat in their seats. Others crawled through the smoky darkness, trying to find exits, all but one of which were either not functioning or hidden in nonpublic areas.
Many patrons attempted to exit through the main entrance, the same way they had entered. The building's main entrance was a single revolving door, which was rendered useless as the crowd stampeded in panic. Bodies piled up behind both sides of the revolving door, jamming it until it broke. The oxygen-hungry fire then leaped through the breach, incinerating whoever was left alive in the pile. Firemen had to douse the flames to approach the door.
Other avenues of escape were similarly useless; side doors had been bolted shut to prevent people from leaving without paying. A plate-glass window, which could have been smashed for escape, was boarded up and unusable as an emergency exit. Other unlocked doors, like the ones in the Broadway Lounge, opened inwards, rendering them useless against the crush of people trying to escape. Fire officials later testified that had the doors swung outwards, at least 300 lives could have been spared.
From nearby bars, soldiers and sailors raced to assist. On the street, firefighters lugged out bodies and were treated for burned hands. As night deepened, the temperature dropped. Water on cobblestone pavements froze over, and hoses were fused to the ground. Newspaper trucks were appropriated as ambulances. Smoldering bodies, living and dead, were hosed in icy water. Some victims had breathed fumes so hot that when they inhaled cold air, as one firefighter put it, they dropped like stones.
Later, during the cleanup of the building, firefighters found several dead guests sitting in their seats with drinks in their hands. They had been overcome so quickly by fire and toxic smoke that they had not had time to move.
Victims and escapees
Boston newspapers were filled with lists of the dead and stories of narrow escapes. Well-known film actor Buck Jones was at the club that night, and his wife later explained that he had initially escaped and then gone back into the burning building to find his agent, producer Scott R. Dunlap of Monogram Pictures. However, Jones was discovered slumped under his table severely burned, so some doubted accounts of his escape. Although rushed to hospital, Jones died of his injuries two days later. Dunlap, who was hosting a party at the nightclub in honor of Jones, was seriously injured, but survived.
Staff at the Cocoanut Grove fared better in escaping than customers, owing to their familiarity with service areas, where the fire's effects were less severe than in the public areas, and which provided access to additional window and door exits. A double door opposite the public entryway to the main dining room was unlocked by wait staff and became the only functional outside exit from public areas. Although several members of the band died, including musical director Bernie Fazioli, most of them escaped backstage and through a service door that they rammed open. Alpert escaped out of a basement window and was credited with leading several people to safety. Bassist Jack Lesberg went on to play music with Louis Armstrong, Sarah Vaughan, Leonard Bernstein, and many others until shortly before his death in 2005.
Cashier Jeanette Lanzoni, entertainer Goody Goodelle, three bartenders, and other employees and patrons in the Melody Lounge escaped into the kitchen. Bartender Daniel Weiss survived by dousing a cloth napkin with a pitcher of water and breathing through it as he made his escape from the Melody Lounge. Those in the kitchen had escape routes through a window above a service bar and up a stairway to another window and a service door that was eventually rammed open. Five people survived by taking refuge in a walk-in refrigerator and a few more in an icebox. Rescuers reached the kitchen after about 10 minutes.
Coast Guardsman Clifford Johnson went back inside the building no fewer than four times in search of his date, who unbeknownst to him, had safely escaped. Johnson suffered extensive third-degree burns over 55% of his body, but survived the disaster, becoming the most severely burned person to survive his injuries to date. After 21 months in a hospital and several hundred operations, he married his nurse and returned to his home state of Missouri. Fourteen years later, he burned to death in a fiery automobile crash.
The Cocoanut Grove fire was the second-deadliest single-building fire in American history; only the 1903 Iroquois Theatre fire in Chicago had a higher death toll, of 602. The Grove fire occurred only two years after the Rhythm Club fire, which had killed 209. The last known survivor of the Cocoanut Grove fire, Robert L. Shumway, died on June 25, 2025, at the age of 101.
Investigations
An official report revealed that the Cocoanut Grove had been inspected by a captain in the Boston Fire Department (BFD) just 10 days before the fire and declared safe. The Grove was found to have not obtained any licenses for operation for several years; no food handlers' permits and no liquor licenses had been issued. Stanley Tomaszewski, the busboy who had allegedly started the fire, was underaged and should not have been working there. Moreover, the recent remodeling of the Broadway Lounge had been done without building permits, using unlicensed contractors.
Tomaszewski testified at the inquiry and was exonerated, as he was not responsible for the flammable decorations or the Life Safety Code violations. He was nevertheless ostracized for much of his life because of the fire. Tomaszewski died in 1994.