17 Piedmont St, Boston, Massachusetts
17 Piedmont isn’t a street address in Boston anymore, and the street map around this location has changed dramatically in the post-war years — with the Revere Hotel Boston Common née Radisson hotel taking over the footprint of several former city blocks.
In Google Maps, streetview reveals a green construction fence and and excavator in place as a new development rises to take its place in this historic corner of Boston.
As the street address (and a small bronze plaque onsite) indicates, this is location of the former Cocoanut Grove nightclub, which went up in flames in 1942. Built in 1927, and serving a a speakeasy during Prohibition, the Grove was the place to be during the war years.
According to the Boston Historical Society, the first floor housed the dining room and bandstand. On warm nights, the roof could be retracted to allow for stargazing. Downstairs held the more intimate Melody Lounge, which was decked out in South Seas decor: paper palm trees, cloth draperies and rattan furniture.
Owned by Barnet “Barney” Welansky, who bragged of his political and Mafia connections, the Grove was run with caviler attention to safety. Concern for the bottom line led Welansky to order his employees to lock some exits, conceal others, and even brick up one way out of the Grove.
These decisions had terrible consequences when, on the evening of November 28, 1942, busboy Stanley Tomaszewski reportedly struck a match while replacing a lightbulb and one of the worst fire accidents in the United States began to unfold.
Without any initial noticeable flames, the Melody Lounge’s decoration seemed to melt before one of the paper palms finally ignited. Bartenders tried to douse the flames with selzer water while the patrons rushed the only way out, a four-foot wide staircase. Many had their hair and clothes singed as they made their way up to the main floor chased by a fireball of toxic gas and withering heat.
Containment in the Melody Lounge didn’t last long, with patrons reporting a fireball on the dance floor just minutes after the initial ignition. Panic was unstoppable at this point. The nearly 1,000 souls in the Grove made a mad dash for the main exit, a single revolving door, that soon became jammed with the pressure of bodies trying to make it outside.
Employees led some patrons through the kitchens and service areas, which were dark due to electricity going out shortly after the fire started. Some lucky patrons managed to discover an exit door in the new, but not yet licensed, “New Lounge,” next to the dance floor, but as that exit door opened inward, it was soon slammed shut by the force of people panicking and pushing on the crowd.
Five alarms later, 492 had perished.
The fire was a tragedy with a few silver linings. In the aftermath of the inferno, physicians at Boston General used penecillin for the first time in the fight against infection for burn victims. And the City of Boston and the Commonwealth of Massachuttes became much more concerned with building and life safety.
Initially revolving doors were outlawed. Later amendments to the code allowed for them, so long as they were flanked by outward facing doors with panic bars. Emergency lighting and sprinklers became standard on all new development. And the use of flammable materials in both decorations, as well as in many structural elements of the building were outlawed as well.
These enhancements worked. According to FEMA, in 2011, only 8% of fire fatalities, some 240 cases, occurred in non-residential structures. And almost all fire related statistics are tending in the right direction.
Which brings us back to 1010 Massachusetts Avenue and the Boston Fire Department. To this day, an essential step in licensing any nightclub or restaurant is filling out applications for a “Place of Assembly Permit,” or a “Use of Candles” permits. Whether applied for in-person or online through permits.boston.gov, these processes have very long, and very serious histories and serve today to protect citizens and visitors alike in Boston.
