The tragic fire at a gay bar here on Sunday, June 24 [1973] — being celebrated as Gay Pride in many of the nation’s cities — turned a festive evening info a hell in which 29 persons died. One other man died in a hospital four days later. Fourteen others were injured, several of them barely clinging to life nearly a week after the blaze.
The belief was widespread that the bar—the Up Stairs Lounge—had been firebombed, but authorities had still made no official determination of the cause of the blaze nearly a week later.
Fire Supt. William McCrossan said “it could be one of the worst fires in the city’s history in terms of people killed.” Certainly never before in the memory of observers had a gay bar
