Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy Vie Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. We've gotten
Speaker 1: a lot of requests over the years to do an
Speaker 1: episode about the Coconut Grove nightclub fire, and I have
Speaker 1: really really put off doing it because of all the
Speaker 1: different types of disasters there are to research. For me,
Speaker 1: the fires are the worst ones there. They're bad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're bad. We can talk about reasons why on Friday
Speaker 1: and the behind the scenes. But the Coconut Grove fire
Speaker 1: came up not long ago on our episode on Charles
Speaker 1: Ponzi because his wife Rose worked there. She went to
Speaker 1: work there after he had been deported back to Italy,
Speaker 1: but she was not at work that night, so I
Speaker 1: thought about moving it onto the list. Then after it
Speaker 1: had come up, and as I was looking at it,
Speaker 1: I realized this year is the fires eightieth anniversary. It
Speaker 1: happened on November. This is still the deadliest nightclub fire
Speaker 1: in history, and in terms of single building fires, it
Speaker 1: is the second deadliest in United States history. The deadliest
Speaker 1: was the Iroquois Theater fire in Chicago that happened on
Speaker 1: December nineteen oh three, and we covered that fire on
Speaker 1: this show on December eight. As we will discuss, though,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of lessons from the Iroquois Theater
Speaker 1: fire that had not been heated at Coconut Grove almost
Speaker 1: forty years later. Coconut Grove, often known just as the Grove,
Speaker 1: was at seventeen Piedmont Street in Boston, Massachusetts, with an
Speaker 1: entrance set behind a trio of archways. It's theme may
Speaker 1: have been inspired by the Coconut Grove nightclub at the
Speaker 1: Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. Boston's Coconut
Speaker 1: Grove had opened in in what had previously been a
Speaker 1: garage and warehouse. Over time, it had been built on
Speaker 1: and expanded and remodeled and by The club had this
Speaker 1: kind of odd, almost zigzag shape. The ground floor contained
Speaker 1: the caricature bar as well as a full service restaurant.
Speaker 1: The restaurant had a central dance floor with tables and
Speaker 1: chairs on three sides of it and an orchestra stage
Speaker 1: on the fourth. This area had a retractable roof that
Speaker 1: could be opened in good weather, which I think sounds
Speaker 1: very nice. This was November, though, so it was closed
Speaker 1: the night of the fire. The ground floor also had
Speaker 1: a newly opened lounge called the Broadway Lounge also just
Speaker 1: called the New Lounge, that also had a bar in it.
Speaker 1: There were also coat check rooms, restrooms, dressing rooms for
Speaker 1: the entertainer, is, a telephone room, and a service bar.
Speaker 1: So there was a lot of stuff packed into this
Speaker 1: relatively small kind of zigzag shaped space. The basement of
Speaker 1: the grove had only one public space, the Melody Lounge.
Speaker 1: The rest of the basement house the furnace room, the kitchens,
Speaker 1: with walking, cold storage and other storage spaces on both floors.
Speaker 1: The club was decorated with lighted artificial palm trees, satiny
Speaker 1: fabric draped from the ceiling and walls of stairs, and
Speaker 1: the Melody Lounge had a satin covered ceiling and walls
Speaker 1: covered in ratan bamboo and synthetic leather. Previously, the grove
Speaker 1: had been owned by mob boss Charles Solomon, who was
Speaker 1: known as King. Solomon was murdered at Boston's Cotton Club
Speaker 1: in ninety three, and at that point his wife inherited
Speaker 1: the grove. She gave it to their lawyer, Barnett Wolansky,
Speaker 1: known as Barney in lieu of legal fees. When Solomon
Speaker 1: owned it, the grove had kind of a seedy reputation
Speaker 1: as a prohibition earirest speak easy but well Landski tried
Speaker 1: to transform it into a more glamorous place that people
Speaker 1: would want to come for dinner, drinks, dancing, and entertainment.
Speaker 1: On the night of November, the grove was busy. It
Speaker 1: was the Saturday after Thanksgiving. There had been a big
Speaker 1: college football game earlier in the day between rivals Boston
Speaker 1: College and Holy Cross College. Boston College was at the
Speaker 1: end of an undefeated season and everyone expected them to
Speaker 1: win and then be invited to play in the Sugar Bowl.
Speaker 1: There was reportedly even a committee on hand to deliver
Speaker 1: that invitation after the game, but surprise, Boston College lost
Speaker 1: fifty five to twelve. That was an enormous upset. A
Speaker 1: formal celebration had been planned at the grove, which was
Speaker 1: canceled because of that loss, but a lot of people
Speaker 1: made their way there after the game anyway. A party
Speaker 1: that went on as planned that night was in honor
Speaker 1: of actor Buck Jones. Jones was known for his work
Speaker 1: in westerns. He had acting credits and more than a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty films, almost all of them Westerns. He
Speaker 1: was on a tour promoting war bonds, and about thirty
Speaker 1: people were at his party. A lot of them were
Speaker 1: affiliated with Monogram Theater Group. Since this happened as the
Speaker 1: United States was involved in World War Two, there were
Speaker 1: also a lot of servicemen there. At about ten fifteen
Speaker 1: that night, the grove was absolutely packed. The club's license
Speaker 1: applications with the City of Boston specified that it had
Speaker 1: four hundred chairs and thirty stools, although sources contradict about
Speaker 1: what the club's maximum occupancy was. There are sources that
Speaker 1: list both four hundred sixty and six hundred people. Regardless,
Speaker 1: it's estimated that there were about a thousand people in
Speaker 1: the building that night, so roughly twice the planned number. Downstairs,
Speaker 1: in a corner of the mill the lounge, someone loosened
Speaker 1: a light bulb in one of the artificial palm trees.
Speaker 1: That corner was already pretty dimly lit, but this person
Speaker 1: apparently wanted some more privacy with his date. The bartender
Speaker 1: noticed this and told a bus boy to go fix
Speaker 1: the bulb. Without that bulblet, it was too dark in
Speaker 1: the corner to see, so the bus boy lit a match,
Speaker 1: and then once he was done, he extinguished the match,
Speaker 1: stomping it out on the floor with his foot. Very
Speaker 1: soon after this, people noticed sparks in the vicinity of
Speaker 1: this palm tree near the ceiling, but for a moment
Speaker 1: there was not an obvious flame. But then the fire
Speaker 1: spread very rapidly along the underside of the fabric draped
Speaker 1: below the ceiling. It took somewhere between two and four
Speaker 1: minutes for a very hot, fast moving fire to engulf
Speaker 1: the melody lounge. The stairway out of the lounge, which
Speaker 1: was narrow and steep, acted like a chimney, drawing the
Speaker 1: fire and the heat up to the ground floor of
Speaker 1: the building, where it burst into the foyer. The foyer
Speaker 1: had a high, arched ceiling, and it similarly acted like
Speaker 1: a chimney and pulled the fire into the rest of
Speaker 1: the ground floor. The fabric draped walls and ceiling quickly
Speaker 1: caught fire. Within about five minutes, the fire had moved
Speaker 1: through the ground floor restaurant and into the New Broadway lounge.
Speaker 1: When people noticed the flames, they panicked, and that panic
Speaker 1: became much worse when the lights went out Just minutes
Speaker 1: after the fire started, there were no emergency lights, and
Speaker 1: the exits were not marked. Even if they had been.
Speaker 1: Many of the doors were locked. People overturned tables and
Speaker 1: punched and shoved one another as they fought to get
Speaker 1: to an exit. And the exit the vast majority of
Speaker 1: people were pushing for was the revolving door that they
Speaker 1: used to enter the building that was quickly jammed with bodies.
Speaker 1: As the fire burned through the oxygen and the melody lounge,
Speaker 1: it left very hot, flammable gases that burst into flame
Speaker 1: again when they got to the top of the stairs,
Speaker 1: where there was more fresh air, and that meant people
Speaker 1: who didn't make it up the stairs ahead of the
Speaker 1: fire found those stairs blocked by flames. The same was
Speaker 1: true for the buildings working doors to the outside. The
Speaker 1: fire surged as it came into contact with the fresh air.
Speaker 1: This included surging around the sides of the revolving door,
Speaker 1: so the doors that were not locked became totally impassable.
Speaker 1: They were blocked by bursts of flame and by bodies
Speaker 1: stacked on top of one another. Together, all of this
Speaker 1: was disastrous. Four hundred two people died. Official lists include
Speaker 1: four nine names. One person who died in the hospital
Speaker 1: is not included for reasons that are unclear. Another person
Speaker 1: survived the fire but lost his wife, and he took
Speaker 1: his own life at the hospital. There were also one
Speaker 1: hundred sixties x reported injuries, but those are only the
Speaker 1: people who were taken to the hospital. With an estimated
Speaker 1: one thousand people in the building that night, that means
Speaker 1: about half of the people who were there died. Only
Speaker 1: one in four made it out without an injury bad
Speaker 1: enough to send them to the hospital. Most of the
Speaker 1: deaths were from burns, smoke annilation, or carbon monoxide poisoning,
Speaker 1: but there were also deaths from crushing injuries or other
Speaker 1: injuries sustained while trying to escape. We're going to take
Speaker 1: a quick sponsor break, and then we'll talk about efforts
Speaker 1: to put out the fire and the rescue efforts. The
Speaker 1: Coconut Grove fire happened at a moment when Boston's fire
Speaker 1: department and other emergency services were simultaneously reeling and also
Speaker 1: well prepared for such an emergency. On November, less than
Speaker 1: two weeks before the Coconut Grove fire, six firefighters had
Speaker 1: been killed and about fifty others trapped or injured. After
Speaker 1: a wall collapsed. The restaurant fire they had been fighting
Speaker 1: had been brought under control, and the wall collapsed after
Speaker 1: that part was basically finished. Then, the weekend before the
Speaker 1: Coconut Grove fire, Boston had also conducted a civil defense drill.
Speaker 1: This was a drill that simulated a blitzkrieg like attack
Speaker 1: on the city with mass casualties. So while the fire
Speaker 1: department and other people who had responded to that fire
Speaker 1: were still really recovering from this earlier disaster, thousands of
Speaker 1: people had also just practiced exactly what to do. Because
Speaker 1: Boston is a major city on the US eastern Seaboard,
Speaker 1: officials had been preparing for the possibility of an enemy attack.
Speaker 1: In addition to the civil defense drill, area hospitals had
Speaker 1: started establishing blood banks and stockpiling blood and plasma. Blood
Speaker 1: banks were really a brand new innovation at this point.
Speaker 1: That's something else that has been on Tracy's list for
Speaker 1: a bit, so expect an episode on that fairly soon
Speaker 1: as well. I am working on it right now. In fact,
Speaker 1: at about ten fift PM on the night of the fire,
Speaker 1: just as it was getting started in the Melody Lounge,
Speaker 1: the Boston Fire Department responded to a signal from a
Speaker 1: fire alarm box at the corner of Stewart and Carver Streets.
Speaker 1: Carver Street is Charles Street today. M turned out to
Speaker 1: be a vehicle fire, which they extinguished, but then firefighters
Speaker 1: heard a commotion and noticed smoke coming from the direction
Speaker 1: of coconut growth, which was not far away. As the
Speaker 1: firefighters moved to investigate, they also ran into bystanders who
Speaker 1: were calling for help. So, by total coincidence, the Boston
Speaker 1: Fire Department was already there on the scene working to
Speaker 1: bring the fire under control. Within minutes of its starting,
Speaker 1: another bystander pulled the alarm at another fire department call box,
Speaker 1: and at ten twenty three, roughly eight minutes after the
Speaker 1: fire started, the fire chief on the scene ordered a
Speaker 1: third alarm to be called. A fourth alarm followed almost
Speaker 1: immediately at eleven o two. This became a five alarm fire.
Speaker 1: Over that period, twenty five engine companies, five ladder companies,
Speaker 1: a water tower, and a rescue company had all arrived,
Speaker 1: along with other emergency responders. Other people soon on the
Speaker 1: scene included Boston Mayor Maurice J. Tobin, the Fire Commissioner,
Speaker 1: the Building Commissioner, the Police Commissioner and the Superintendent of Police,
Speaker 1: the State Fire Marshal, Boston's acting Commissioner of Public Safety,
Speaker 1: and the director of the Boston Committee on Public Safety
Speaker 1: were all there as well. Civilian defense units arrived, as
Speaker 1: well as people from the Red Cross and the Salvation Army.
Speaker 1: The military was involved in the response as well. A
Speaker 1: call went out to Boston Navy Yard at about ten pm,
Speaker 1: and members of the Navy Army, Coast Guard, National Guard,
Speaker 1: and the Naval Hospital in Chelsea, Massachusetts were all involved
Speaker 1: in the response. And of course there were also many
Speaker 1: civilians who came and tried to help, and we're not
Speaker 1: affiliated with any specific group. By coincidence, the club's owner,
Speaker 1: Barney Wolanski, was not present. He was at Massachusetts General
Speaker 1: Hospital recovering from a heart attack he had experienced days before. Tragically,
Speaker 1: it really did not matter how quickly the fire department
Speaker 1: or any of these other responders got there. The fire
Speaker 1: had just been much faster and people were already dead
Speaker 1: and dying. In the words of Fire Commissioner William Arthur
Speaker 1: Riley's official report quote, within two to five minutes of
Speaker 1: the first appearance of the fire, most of the possible exits,
Speaker 1: including all exits normally open to the public, were useless.
Speaker 1: Pouring of fire through such exits made it impossible for
Speaker 1: humans to pass simultaneously through these exits safely. In the
Speaker 1: course of such pouring, the mass of burning gaseous material
Speaker 1: appears to have been depressed from its high elevation within
Speaker 1: the premises in order to pass through the exits. The
Speaker 1: finding of bodies piled up at many of the exits
Speaker 1: is attributable to this fact. These persons, in attempting to
Speaker 1: pass through the exits, were overcome by the great heat
Speaker 1: of the gaseous material pouring through them. At the same time,
Speaker 1: to the same cause must be set down the bodies
Speaker 1: found in the passageway in the corridor at the head
Speaker 1: of the stairway leading from the melody Lounge. In pouring
Speaker 1: through these low seed linked passageways, the mass of gaseous
Speaker 1: material passed so close to such persons as to overcome them.
Speaker 1: Most of the people who survived the fire had managed
Speaker 1: to get out of the building before the flames reached
Speaker 1: the doorways. A few people made it up to the roof.
Speaker 1: Some of them jumped down onto the roofs of parked
Speaker 1: cars below. While others found a adder, although this ladder
Speaker 1: wasn't long enough to reach to the ground from the roof,
Speaker 1: so the people on the roof were trying to hold
Speaker 1: it up for people to climb down as far as
Speaker 1: they could and then dropped to the ground from the
Speaker 1: bottom of it. Once firefighters spotted people on the roof,
Speaker 1: they moved in to help bring them down. A few
Speaker 1: people got out through windows, but most of the windows
Speaker 1: were glass block windows that just could not be opened
Speaker 1: or broken. Coconut Grove employees and entertainers who knew the
Speaker 1: layout of the building made their way out through the
Speaker 1: kitchen or other non public areas, and some customers did
Speaker 1: manage to follow them out. A few people survived by
Speaker 1: hiding in one of the walk in refrigerators. Some in
Speaker 1: the melody lounge survived by simply covering their faces with
Speaker 1: a wet cloth and lying on the floor below the
Speaker 1: flames until the fire was over and rescuers could get
Speaker 1: into the building. Even though the city of Boston had
Speaker 1: just been through a big drill about exactly such an
Speaker 1: occurrence for spawning to a catastrophe of this size was
Speaker 1: still really challenging. Many of the streets around the club
Speaker 1: were small, Some of them were paved with cobblestones, and
Speaker 1: they quickly became jammed with emergency vehicles and people, including bystanders,
Speaker 1: people who needed emergency medical care, and the bodies of
Speaker 1: people who had died. They're also simply were not enough
Speaker 1: ambulances to carry so many people to hospitals. People were
Speaker 1: transported to the hospital in delivery trucks, taxi cabs, basically
Speaker 1: any other vehicle that could be used. Most of the
Speaker 1: victims were taken to one of two hospitals, Boston City
Speaker 1: Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. Boston City Hospital received three
Speaker 1: hundred victims of the fire over the course of only
Speaker 1: an hour. Rescuers started sending more people to m g
Speaker 1: H when it became clear that Boston City Hospital was overwhelmed,
Speaker 1: and MGH received a hundred and fourteen people over the
Speaker 1: course of about two hours. Much smaller numbers of people
Speaker 1: were sent to hospitals elsewhere in Boston and in neighboring cities,
Speaker 1: including Cambridge and Malden. At many of the hospitals, patients
Speaker 1: started arriving around a shift change that meant that extra
Speaker 1: people were already on hand, but the hospital still needed
Speaker 1: help from other medical personnel all over the area beyond
Speaker 1: the sheer numbers of patients. One of the challenges that
Speaker 1: the hospitals faced was that the ratio of injured and
Speaker 1: dead was very different from most major fires and other disasters. Often,
Speaker 1: far more people are injured than are killed, but in
Speaker 1: the Coconut Grove fire, far more people were killed than
Speaker 1: were injured. The hospitals were receiving so many people who
Speaker 1: were dead by the time they arrived, or who died
Speaker 1: very shortly after arriving, that it created delays in treating
Speaker 1: the people who were still living, whose injuries weren't fatal,
Speaker 1: but who really did need to be treated as quickly
Speaker 1: as possible. Eventually, a temporary morgue was set up in
Speaker 1: a parking deck across the street from the grove to
Speaker 1: try to reduce the number of dead who wound up
Speaker 1: at the hospitals, but in a few cases, people who
Speaker 1: were taken to the temporary morgue turned out to still
Speaker 1: be alive. In many disasters like these, it takes a
Speaker 1: long time to get a final death count, but in
Speaker 1: the case of the Coconut Grove fire, that was established
Speaker 1: very quickly, less than twelve hours after the fire, the
Speaker 1: known death toll had already passed four hundred. What took
Speaker 1: a lot longer was identifying the bodies. Many people had
Speaker 1: died of asphyxiation or smoke in elation, and their clothing
Speaker 1: was mostly intact, so anyone carrying their i d In
Speaker 1: a wallet or in their pockets definitely identified fairly quickly,
Speaker 1: But most people who had carried their i d In
Speaker 1: a purse or in a handbag had lost it in
Speaker 1: the scramble to escape, so in general, many women's bodies
Speaker 1: took much longer to identify, especially before a responders set
Speaker 1: up a centralized information hub. This led to problems at
Speaker 1: the hospitals as people desperately tried to get information about
Speaker 1: missing loved ones who had not yet been identified. The
Speaker 1: people killed as a result of the fire included Buck Jones,
Speaker 1: who died in the hospital two days later. Only one
Speaker 1: of the people who had been at his party escaped uninjured,
Speaker 1: and more than half died. Fifty one servicemen and two
Speaker 1: members of the Women's Army Corps were killed, and another
Speaker 1: twenty seven servicemen were injured. This was so many that
Speaker 1: it raised suspicions that this had been an intentional act
Speaker 1: of wartime sabotage, and that prompted the First Naval District
Speaker 1: to conduct its own investigation into the fire. For a while,
Speaker 1: this fire displaced World War Two on the front page
Speaker 1: of Boston's newspapers and some of the newspapers in the region.
Speaker 1: After another quick sponsor break, we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: investigations into the fire's cause and its aftermath and some
Speaker 1: of the advances that came about in the wake of
Speaker 1: the fire. Like we said at the top of the show,
Speaker 1: we're coming up on the eightieth anniversary of the Coconut
Speaker 1: Grove fire, but we still don't know exactly how it
Speaker 1: started or why it burned the way that it did.
Speaker 1: It was an extremely hot and fast moving, deadly fire,
Speaker 1: while also leaving sections of carpeting and decor and some
Speaker 1: of the furniture essentially untouched. But immediately after the fire,
Speaker 1: news reports in Boston placed the blame on one specific
Speaker 1: person who still often comes up today, and that's the
Speaker 1: bus boy who had let the match. That was Stanley Tomaschowski,
Speaker 1: who was only sixteen. Stanley was an honors student at
Speaker 1: Roxbury Middle School for Boys. His mother was seriously ill
Speaker 1: and he was supplementing his father's in as a janitor
Speaker 1: by working at the grove on busy weekends. While it
Speaker 1: is clear that he did light a match, it is
Speaker 1: not at all clear that that match started the fire.
Speaker 1: This was an arrow when smoking indoors was a lot
Speaker 1: more common, and businesses, including Coconut Grove, routinely handed out
Speaker 1: matchbooks to customers, so this certainly was not the only
Speaker 1: match lit in the lounge that night. Investigations also reveal
Speaker 1: a lot of problems with the building's electrical wiring, and
Speaker 1: its most recent electrical work had not been done by
Speaker 1: a licensed electrician. It's possible that the act of loosening
Speaker 1: and tightening that lightbulb had led to a spark that
Speaker 1: ignited the fire, or that a spark came from one
Speaker 1: of the blower units used to heat the lounge, or
Speaker 1: some other source. Entirely. Boston Fire Commissioner William Arthur Riley
Speaker 1: cleared Stanley of any blame in his official report, writing quote,
Speaker 1: after a careful study of all the evidence, and in
Speaker 1: an analysis of all the facts presented before me, I
Speaker 1: am unable to find the conduct of this boy was
Speaker 1: the cause of the fire. State Fire Marshal Stephen C.
Speaker 1: Garrity came to the same conclusion quoted in is saying quote,
Speaker 1: it is clear to me that he did not ignite
Speaker 1: the palm tree in the Melody Lounge. The official report
Speaker 1: on the fire described it as being of unknown origin,
Speaker 1: but early news reports described Stanley as having unquestionably started
Speaker 1: the fire, even though friends, teachers, and others came to
Speaker 1: his defense, and later news reports walked this back. Stanley
Speaker 1: and his family had to stay in a hotel under
Speaker 1: police protection for months, and he continued to deal with
Speaker 1: things like harassing phone calls and threats about it for
Speaker 1: the rest of his life. He died in Even if
Speaker 1: Stanley's match is what started the fire, he the bartender,
Speaker 1: and other employees had immediately tried to extinguish it, and
Speaker 1: none of them had anything to do with the factors
Speaker 1: that made this fire so deadly. It's still not clear
Speaker 1: at all exactly why it burned so hot and so fast.
Speaker 1: One possibility is that there was a methyl chloride leak
Speaker 1: from the club's air conditioners. Methyl chloride, also called chloro methane,
Speaker 1: is a flammable gas that was used as a refrigerant.
Speaker 1: Another possibility is that the asbestos tiles in the ceilings
Speaker 1: had been held down with a flammable glue. A third
Speaker 1: possibility is that there was just a lot of alcohol
Speaker 1: present and a lot of flammable material had been used
Speaker 1: as part of the furnishings and the decor. The design
Speaker 1: of the building certainly played a role, with parts of
Speaker 1: it essentially acting as chimneys. Vents over stages to allow
Speaker 1: fires to escape upward and out of the building were
Speaker 1: required by law, but they were not in place at
Speaker 1: Coconut Grove. But one of the most critical actors and
Speaker 1: the fires deadliness was the building's exits. The building had
Speaker 1: six exits on the ground floor and three in the basement,
Speaker 1: but out of these nine exits, only three of them
Speaker 1: could be opened by the public. One door was equipped
Speaker 1: with a panic bar that should have opened it to
Speaker 1: the outside if somebody pressed on the bar, but that
Speaker 1: bar had been disabled with a bolt. According to some sources,
Speaker 1: the door was actually bolted shut. Into places like exactly
Speaker 1: how this door was shut. There's a couple of different
Speaker 1: accounts of a door out of the Broadway Lounge opened inwards,
Speaker 1: so while some people were able to get out of
Speaker 1: it at first, once it was shut, people were jammed
Speaker 1: up against it and they couldn't get it open again.
Speaker 1: One door had been bricked completely over. A lot of
Speaker 1: people concluded that Barney Willlanski had locked and covered over
Speaker 1: the doors to keep people from leaving without paying their bill,
Speaker 1: although at least some of this might have gone back
Speaker 1: to the nightclubs earlier time as a speakeasy, and the
Speaker 1: fact that none of the exits were marked meant that
Speaker 1: most people tried to escape by going out the way
Speaker 1: they came in. As we said, that was through those
Speaker 1: revolving doors onto Piedmont Street. Revolving doors were invented in
Speaker 1: the eighteen eighties, and they're really useful for energy efficiency
Speaker 1: and for cutting down on street noise inside a building,
Speaker 1: but it was obvious from the beginning that they could
Speaker 1: become blocked in an emergency like a fire. The National
Speaker 1: Fire Protection Association already recommended that revolving doors be flanked
Speaker 1: on either side with standard hinged doors, but at Coconut
Speaker 1: Grove they were not, and the immediate aftermath of the fire,
Speaker 1: all of Boston's nightclubs were closed for a week. The
Speaker 1: use of revolving doors was temporarily banned. With revolving doors
Speaker 1: removed from Boston City Hall just days after the fire.
Speaker 1: Once the ban on revolving doors was lifted, they were
Speaker 1: required to be installed with adjacent hinged doors, just the
Speaker 1: configuration you usually see today. It also became clear that
Speaker 1: this was not simply an issue of needing new and
Speaker 1: better laws or fire codes, but that existing laws and
Speaker 1: codes were not being enforced. Some of the exact same
Speaker 1: problems at Coconut Grove had contributed to earlier fires. As
Speaker 1: we said at the top of the show, the deadliest
Speaker 1: single building fire in US history was the Iroquois Theater fire,
Speaker 1: almost forty years before, and in many ways these fires
Speaker 1: were extremely similar. Both buildings lacked emergency lighting, had exits
Speaker 1: that were obscured and locked or that patrons couldn't get open,
Speaker 1: lacked required sealing, ventilation over the stages, just on and on.
Speaker 1: In both fires, rescuers had to remove piles of bodies
Speaker 1: that were blocking doorways before they could get through them
Speaker 1: to the people inside. Just a couple of days after
Speaker 1: the Coconut Grow fire, Robert Moulton, technical secretary of the
Speaker 1: National Fire Protection Association, was quoted in a press release
Speaker 1: is saying, quote the Coconut Grove nightclub tragedy is clearly
Speaker 1: due to gross violation of several fundamental principles of fire safety,
Speaker 1: which had been demonstrated by years of experience in other fires,
Speaker 1: and which should be known to everybody. In light of
Speaker 1: all of this, people were outraged to learn that a
Speaker 1: Boston fire captain had inspected Coconut Grove less than two
Speaker 1: weeks before the fire and had found it to be safe.
Speaker 1: Another source of outrage was rumors that Barney Wolanski had
Speaker 1: bragged that he didn't need to follow the fire code
Speaker 1: because the mayor was a friend of his. Mayor Tobin
Speaker 1: denied that Welanski was getting any kind of special privileges,
Speaker 1: but people really doubted that he would face any kind
Speaker 1: of consequences for the fire. Welanski was Jewish, and a
Speaker 1: lot of discussion about how much he was to blame
Speaker 1: was also threaded through with anti semitism. A grand jury
Speaker 1: indicted ten people on very as charges connected to the fire.
Speaker 1: Fire Department Inspector Lieutenant Frank J. Lenney for neglect of
Speaker 1: duty and as an accessory after the fact, Captain Joseph
Speaker 1: Bucha Gross for neglecting to enforce fire laws, a designer
Speaker 1: contractor and foreman, who had all worked on the nightclub,
Speaker 1: were all indicted for conspiracy to violate building laws. Boston
Speaker 1: City building inspector Theodore el Dratcher was indicted for failing
Speaker 1: to report building law violations, including lack of sufficient exits,
Speaker 1: and Barney Willanski and his brother James, who was in
Speaker 1: charge of the club that night, were indicted for both
Speaker 1: manslaughter and conspiracy to violate the building laws. But of
Speaker 1: all these indictments, only Willanski was convicted. He was convicted
Speaker 1: of nineteen counts of manslaughter and sentence to twelve to
Speaker 1: fifteen years in prison. It was technically for each count
Speaker 1: he had been convicted on, but they were going to
Speaker 1: be served concurrently this trial. Commonwealth versus Welansky also said
Speaker 1: a precedent that a person didn't have to be actively
Speaker 1: behaving in a reckless or dangerous way, like personally starting
Speaker 1: a fire to be considered guilty of manslaughter. Disregarding safety
Speaker 1: standards that led to people's death or a failure to
Speaker 1: act was enough. Wellanski served about four years of his sentence.
Speaker 1: He was pardoned by Maurice Tobin, who had become governor
Speaker 1: in Massachusetts. After developing terminal cancer, Wellansky died about nine
Speaker 1: weeks after being released. Civil suits had been filed against
Speaker 1: him after the fire, but he had almost no assets
Speaker 1: to pay it with, so there was very little compensation
Speaker 1: to survivors and the families of people who died. The
Speaker 1: fire Commissioner's report made a series of recommendations to prevent
Speaker 1: similar future tragedies. They included requiring automatic sprinklers, banning the
Speaker 1: use of basements as places of assembly unless those basements
Speaker 1: met specific requirement for safe exits, requiring aisle spaces around
Speaker 1: restaurant tables which needed to be secured to the floor
Speaker 1: so that they couldn't be overturned and become an obstacle
Speaker 1: in an emergency, requiring illuminated exit signs and panic locks
Speaker 1: at all doors, Banning decor that contained peroxyl in, which
Speaker 1: is a flammable form of cellulose, and requiring basement rooms
Speaker 1: that were used as places of assembly to have windows
Speaker 1: that could open up automatically and draw off flames and
Speaker 1: gases in the event of a fire. The National Fire
Speaker 1: Protection Association also revised its safety codes in the wake
Speaker 1: of this and other major fires. This code was originally
Speaker 1: written to provide guidelines for contractors, builders, and building inspectors.
Speaker 1: But after these fires in the nineteen forties, the National
Speaker 1: Fire Protection Association also revised the way the code was
Speaker 1: written so that its language could be used as the
Speaker 1: basis for laws and official fire codes. That n f
Speaker 1: p A doesn't have in horsement powers over the codes
Speaker 1: that it recommends, that enforcement falls to governments. But a
Speaker 1: lot of these things that made the Coconut Grow fire
Speaker 1: so deadly are still issues today. For example, the fourth
Speaker 1: deadliest nightclub fire in the US happens less than twenty
Speaker 1: years ago. That was the Station nightclub fire in Rhode Island,
Speaker 1: which started when stage pyrotechnics ignited flammable acoustic foam. A
Speaker 1: hundred people died and more than two hundred were injured,
Speaker 1: and various fire codes had not been followed that included
Speaker 1: a requirement for sprinklers to be installed in buildings with
Speaker 1: an occupancy of more than a hundred people. In addition
Speaker 1: to its impact on things like fire codes, the Coconut
Speaker 1: Grow fire led to advances in the treatment of burns
Speaker 1: and respiratory injuries sustained in fires. This research was already
Speaker 1: underway due to World War Two. The fires that occurred
Speaker 1: during attacks like the Blitz and the bombing of Pearl
Speaker 1: Harbor to large numbers of people sustaining serious burns. The
Speaker 1: National Research Council had been funding research through Harvard Medical School,
Speaker 1: which was being carried out in conjunction with Massachusetts General
Speaker 1: Hospital and Boston General Hospital. At the time, serious burns
Speaker 1: were often treated using a process known as tanning, using
Speaker 1: either a combination of three antimicrobial dyes or tannic acid.
Speaker 1: Both of these methods required the burns to be heavily
Speaker 1: dibrided and scrubbed. That was often done under anesthesia because
Speaker 1: it was just so painful, and because of the war,
Speaker 1: anesthesia was in short supply, so people had already been
Speaker 1: trying to find other ways to successfully treat burns. Dr
Speaker 1: Oliver Cope at MGH had developed a burn treatment protocol
Speaker 1: that involved a boric acid ointment and wraps that were
Speaker 1: infused with petroleum jelly that could be used without so
Speaker 1: much debridement. Boston City High Hospital, which is part of
Speaker 1: Boston Medical Center today, they started out treating victims of
Speaker 1: the Coconut Grove fire with either the triple die or
Speaker 1: tanic acid methods, but they phased those out in favor
Speaker 1: of a boric acid protocol that was similar to what
Speaker 1: Coke was using at MGH. Doctors in both hospitals also
Speaker 1: made advances in figuring out when and whether antibiotics were
Speaker 1: helpful in treating burns. SOLFA drugs were commonly used in
Speaker 1: burn treatments, and at m g H they were part
Speaker 1: of initial treatments for all burned patients. Penicillin was also
Speaker 1: brand new at this point, when nearly all of it
Speaker 1: being used for the military. Some of it was diverted
Speaker 1: into Boston to treat people who had survived the fire,
Speaker 1: which was one of the earliest uses of penicillin in
Speaker 1: the United States outside of clinical trials. Doctors found that
Speaker 1: antibiotics made the most difference in patients with full thickness burns,
Speaker 1: but were often unnecessary and patients whose burns were not
Speaker 1: as deep as long as an infection was not introduced
Speaker 1: into the wound. Yeah, maintaining a sterile area was really
Speaker 1: important for that. As we said earlier, blood banks were
Speaker 1: fairly new. The one at MGH had just been established
Speaker 1: that same year, and m g H had two units
Speaker 1: of dried plasma on hand in the event of some
Speaker 1: kind of wartime need in Boston, Prior to this point,
Speaker 1: a lot of medical experts had been cautious about giving
Speaker 1: a lot of fluids to burn patients. There were concerns
Speaker 1: that doing so might lead them to develop pulmonary edema.
Speaker 1: It became clear, though, through treating all of these patients,
Speaker 1: that fluid therapies really helped patients heal without causing pulmonary edema.
Speaker 1: Through treating the victims of the Coconut grove fire, doctors
Speaker 1: also gained a much greater understanding of how often a
Speaker 1: burn patient's biggest issue was a respiratory injury rather than
Speaker 1: the burns on their skin. Many people arrived at the
Speaker 1: hospital in serious condition but did not outwardly appear injured.
Speaker 1: Some even walked into the hospital under their own power,
Speaker 1: but then collapsed after getting there. Some had clear signs
Speaker 1: of carbon monoxide poisoning, but others had respiratory damage from
Speaker 1: inhaling hot toxic gases and smoke. People whose noses and
Speaker 1: mouths were burned, or who had lost consciousness inside the
Speaker 1: building seemed to be at the greatest risk. This is
Speaker 1: not even everything. For example, the entire June volume of
Speaker 1: Annals of Surgery was devoted to developments made at m
Speaker 1: g H while treating victims of the Coconut growth fire.
Speaker 1: The forward to this issue of the journal was written
Speaker 1: by Dr Oliver Cope, and papers in it covered topics
Speaker 1: like protocols, shock pulmonary complications, resuscitating people whose airways were burned,
Speaker 1: surface burned treatments, infections and antibiotics, rehabilitation and physical therapy,
Speaker 1: and hospital administration issues. And article on neuropsychiatric observations was
Speaker 1: authored by Dr Stanley Cobb and Eric Lindeman. Cobb was
Speaker 1: a neurologist who helped establish a department of psychiatry at
Speaker 1: m GH, and some of his work focused on the
Speaker 1: connection between the mind and the body. Lindemann was a
Speaker 1: psychiatrist whose focus was on bereavement and grief. They described
Speaker 1: patients whose recoveries were impacted by a state of acute
Speaker 1: grief and trauma, including an early description of what would
Speaker 1: come to be known as post traumatic stress disorder. This
Speaker 1: research also became part of Lindeman's nineteen forty four paper
Speaker 1: Symptomatology and Management of Acute Grief. The Dr Lindeman especially
Speaker 1: did a lot of work on trauma and grief and
Speaker 1: became really groundbreaking with a lot of that. The area
Speaker 1: where Coconut Grove used to be is really different now
Speaker 1: than it was in ninety two. Various streets have been
Speaker 1: renamed or moved. There's a hotel and condos where the
Speaker 1: nightclub used to be. And nine three, the Bay Village
Speaker 1: Neighborhood Association installed a memorial plaque made by fire survivor
Speaker 1: Anthony P. Mara on Piedmont Street at the approximate site
Speaker 1: of where the revolving door had been. In Shawmant Street extension,
Speaker 1: which connected Shawmant Street with Piedmont Street was renamed Coconut
Speaker 1: Grove Lane. In the memorial plaque was removed so the
Speaker 1: condos could be built, with the agreement that it be
Speaker 1: returned to its original location after construction was done. Instead,
Speaker 1: the plaque was moved farther down the street. Condo owners
Speaker 1: wrote to the Bay Village Neighborhood Association saying, quote, only
Speaker 1: a small portion of our building overlays the site of
Speaker 1: the club. We now occupy these homes with our families
Speaker 1: as part of the Bay Village Neighborhood and would like
Speaker 1: to enjoy our homes in peace without tragic memories hanging
Speaker 1: reaths at our doors and tourists peaking into our houses.
Speaker 1: People were very upset with a sense that rich people
Speaker 1: buying three condos were putting their feelings over the memory
Speaker 1: of victims and survivors and their descendants. I found one
Speaker 1: article that interpreted this as the correct decision, and many
Speaker 1: others by people who either were livid about it, or
Speaker 1: like reporters trying to sound neutral, who clearly we're also
Speaker 1: livid about it. The Coconut Grove Memorial Committee is a
Speaker 1: nonprofit that was established in to try to establish an
Speaker 1: actual memorial for the victims of the Coconut Grove fire,
Speaker 1: as well as to survivors, first responders, and medical professionals,
Speaker 1: rather than only having this plaque in one The Boston
Speaker 1: City Council awarded two fifty thousand dollars in Community Preservation
Speaker 1: Act funds for a memorial at Statler Park, which is
Speaker 1: a small park that's not far away from where the
Speaker 1: night club was. The current proposed design for this memorial
Speaker 1: involves a set of three archways to resemble that arch
Speaker 1: entryway into Coconut Grove. A documentary called Six Locked Doors
Speaker 1: played at various film festivals in twenty nineteen. It's been
Speaker 1: aired on various PBS stations around the region since then.
Speaker 1: As of when we're recording this, there are two known
Speaker 1: survivors of the fire who were still living. Both of
Speaker 1: them were only eighteen when the fire happened, So that
Speaker 1: as a Coconut Grove nightclub fire, that's a rough one.
Speaker 1: Do you have some listener may I do? This is
Speaker 1: from Jen and Jen wrote about um our Helen Duncan episode,
Speaker 1: and Jen said, Dear Holly and Tracy, I adore your
Speaker 1: show and hearing about people, places and events that are
Speaker 1: new to me, as it broadens my knowledge and provides
Speaker 1: context for so many modern events that I would otherwise lack.
Speaker 1: Thank you for making the past present. I also like
Speaker 1: it when a story touches closer to home, and your
Speaker 1: recent episode about Helen Duncan is one such episode. As
Speaker 1: a friend of mine met Helen Duncan. Jen goes on
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about how this friend is
Speaker 1: in their later years at this point, at least in
Speaker 1: at least in his eighties, and they know one another
Speaker 1: from church. A few years ago. I was talking to
Speaker 1: my friend and we got onto the subject of Helen Duncan.
Speaker 1: He then gestured for me to lean in and whispered
Speaker 1: that when he was sixteen he had been to a
Speaker 1: seance by Helen Duncan. He was taken by his minister.
Speaker 1: At the time. This was a big taboo within Presbyterianism,
Speaker 1: which is why he whispered it, as even today he
Speaker 1: didn't want other members of the church to know in
Speaker 1: case they disapproved. Despite it now being no big deal.
Speaker 1: It's also why I'm not naming him. He talked about
Speaker 1: how she strode across the stage like a tiger. I
Speaker 1: asked him if he thought she was genuine, knowing the
Speaker 1: fact that she was convicted for being a false medium,
Speaker 1: and without any hesitation, he proclaimed that she was the
Speaker 1: real deal. He was convinced that night that she contacted
Speaker 1: the deads picking up on the favorite color flower of
Speaker 1: that one person had in their garden, and the smell
Speaker 1: of pigs from some people visiting Edinburgh from an outside
Speaker 1: village who kept pigs at their place. It was fascinating
Speaker 1: to think an old friend of mine met and engaged
Speaker 1: with such a famous historical figure, and to hear his
Speaker 1: experience of one of her seances. These things are not
Speaker 1: as far in the past as we might think, and
Speaker 1: these personal connections to the subjects of the podcast are
Speaker 1: still alive and thriving. Jen then asked if it was
Speaker 1: okay to Um to burn a copy of the episode
Speaker 1: onto a CD for her friends to listen to, because
Speaker 1: he does not really know how to do podcasts. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you if you want to burn an episode of
Speaker 1: a podcast onto a CD for your own personal use,
Speaker 1: that is generally fine. UM and Jen also sent some
Speaker 1: really great pictures of a cat named Tibby Tippy You
Speaker 1: Jenn was not able to see for a really long time,
Speaker 1: as as things as travel was not happening during the pandemic. UM,
Speaker 1: So thank you so much Jen for sending this. I
Speaker 1: wanted to read it because one of the things Jen notes,
Speaker 1: and the part of this that I kind of skimmed over,
Speaker 1: is that Presbyterianism today is a lot more progressive than
Speaker 1: it was in the nineteen forties when we talked in
Speaker 1: that episode about how there had been one account that
Speaker 1: said that Helen Duncan's parents said she was going to
Speaker 1: be burned in the steak if she kept doing this
Speaker 1: talking to spirits Um. They had said specifically that it
Speaker 1: was because they were Presbyterian, And I just wasn't able
Speaker 1: to really confirm whether that was the case, and so
Speaker 1: I did not get into that particular detail, but the
Speaker 1: fact that it came back up again in this um,
Speaker 1: in this email, uh made me want to read it also. UM,
Speaker 1: I hope Jen's friend is not disappointed in the episode,
Speaker 1: since we made it clear in the episode that a
Speaker 1: lot of the stuff she was doing with manifestations was
Speaker 1: pretty easily pointed at as like not not the real thing.
Speaker 1: But we also said in the behind the scenes that like,
Speaker 1: we don't know if she felt she was she really
Speaker 1: truly sincerely felt she was speaking to spirits or not,
Speaker 1: or if well we really know. So thank you again,
Speaker 1: Jim for this note and for the cap picture and
Speaker 1: for giving us a chance to read this. If you
Speaker 1: would like to send us a note about this or
Speaker 1: any other podcast, where a history podcast at I heart
Speaker 1: radio dot com. We're also all over social media at
Speaker 1: miss in History. That's where you'll find our Facebook, Twitter,
Speaker 1: Pinterson Instagram, and you can subscribe to our show on
Speaker 1: the I heart Radio app and wherever else you'd like
Speaker 1: to get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class
Speaker 1: is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
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