UpStairs Lounge

The UpStairs Lounge was a gay bar on the second floor of a building at 604 Iberville Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans. On June 24, 1973, an arsonist set fire to the single stairway entrance, and the blaze killed 32 people. It had recently hosted the city's new Metropolitan Community Church congregation. Until the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting, it was the deadliest attack on a gay venue in U.S. history. Media coverage was thin and the official response muted, a reflection of the anti-gay hostility of the era, and some churches refused to bury the dead. The fire is now marked with annual remembrances, and the 2015 documentary Upstairs Inferno helped bring the story to a wider audience.