Browse Items (123 total)

The official General Case Report of the New Orleans Police Department is filed on August 30, two months after the fire. The report lists the names of 28 persons who died. Joe Adams and Reginald Adams are mistakenly identified as the same person.

New Orleans officials reportedly are looking at options to deal with a number of lawsuits that have arisen from the Upstairs Lounge fire and three other catastrophes over the span of about a year.

The Appeals Court upholds the ruling by a District Court judge that the city and its agencies are not liable to families of victims of the fire.

Clarence Joseph McCloskey, Jr. , 48, store manager, partner of Joe William "Bill" Bailey (see above).  McCloskey’s sisters and two nieces attended the memorial service.

The August 1st edition of The Advocate continues analyzing what happened at the Upstairs Lounge and the responses from the gay community as well as city officials.

Early picture of the building on the corner of Chartres and Iberville where the Upstairs Lounge was later located.

Firemen peer from the charred windows of a second story bar in the New Orleans French Quarter that [was] gutted by a flash fire Sunday night leaving 29 dead and 15 injured. The bar is located at the corner of Iberville and Chartes just a block off…

Linn Quinton weeps as he is helped by New Orleans firemen after he escaped from a fire at the Upstairs bar on Sunday night. Quinton said he was with a group singing around the piano when the fire swept through the bar leaving 29 dead [and] 15…

GLF leader David Solomon shown printing leaflets or newsletter on mimeograph machine.

David Stuart Gary, 22, ragtime pianist who played at the Upstairs Lounge and the Marriott Hotel across the street, was friend of Bill Larson.

Following Solomon’s departure, Deacon Bill Larson becomes interim pastor and was serving at the time of the fire.

Donald Walter Dunbar, 21, from Tampa, Florida.

Douglas Maxwell Williams, Jr., 20, truck driver in Waggaman, Louisiana.

Dr. Perry Lane Waters, Jr., 41, Jefferson Parish dentist. Several victims were his patients and were identified through his records.

Duane George “Mitch” Mitchell (pictured on left), 31, beauty supply salesman and MCC assistant pastor, died going back into fire to save his partner, Louis Horace Broussard (see above). Mitch & Horace had dropped off Mitch’s sons at a nearby movie…

Eddie Hosea Warren, 24, of Pensacola, Florida, son of housekeeper Willie Inez Warren and brother of James Curtis Warren. All three died in the fire.

Philip Esteve applies for liquor license for 604 Iberville Street.

Ferris LeBlanc, buried in Potter’s Field as no one claimed his remains.

During its reporting on the Upstairs Lounge Fire, the national gay newsmagazine, The Advocate, publishes an editorial noting potential fire dangers in many gay bars, clubs and bathhouses.

The first in a series of newspaper stories notes the emergence of the Gay People’s Coalition and heightened visibility and activism in the New Orleans gay community following the fire.