Beverly Hills Supper Club fire
The club on fire.
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| Date | May 28, 1977 |
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| Venue | Beverly Hills Supper Club |
| Location | Southgate, Kentucky |
| Coordinates | 39°03′49″N 84°27′54″W / 39.06361°N 84.46500°WCoordinates: 39°03′49″N 84°27′54″W / 39.06361°N 84.46500°W |
| Type | Fire |
| Deaths | 165 |
| Non-fatal injuries | 200+ |
The Beverly Hills Supper Club fire in Southgate, Kentucky, is the third deadliest nightclub fire in U.S. history. It occurred on the night of May 28, 1977, during the Memorial Day holiday weekend. A total of 165 people died and more than 200 were injured as a result of the blaze. It was the deadliest fire in the United States since 1944, when 168 people were killed in the Hartford circus fire in Hartford, Connecticut.
The Beverly Hills was a major attraction, less than ten miles (15 km) outside Cincinnati, just across the Ohio River in Southgate, Kentucky, on US 27, near what would later become its interchange with Interstate 471. It drew its talent from Las Vegas, Nashville, Hollywood and New York, among other places. The site had been a popular nightspot and illegal gambling house as early as 1926; Ohio native Dean Martin had been a blackjack dealer there. It had reopened under the then-current owners and management in 1971 and was considered an elegant, upscale venue that attracted both top-notch talent and top-notch clientele.
Several additions had been built onto the original structure between 1970 and 1976, creating a sprawling, non-linear complex of function rooms and service areas. The resulting complex was roughly square in shape, and though it was not situated in a north-south direction, reports of the fire have tended to assign those points to points in the complex for ease of reference. Assuming this system, the front entrance of the complex lay at the southern point of the compass. Along the central portion of the southern wall, to the east of the building entrance, was a small event room called the Zebra Room. A narrow corridor to the Zebra Room's east separated it from the Viennese Room and a series of service spaces, which ran northward along the building's eastern wall. This interior corridor terminated between the Garden Room, occupying the central portion of the north wall of the building, and the Cabaret Room, which jutted out from the northeastern corner of the building. A smaller, branching corridor led from the internal corridor to an exit door that sat between the Garden Room and the Cabaret Room; to exit the building from the Cabaret Room using that corridor, a person would have, in order, pass through a set of double doors into the main interior corridor, pass through a single door between the main interior corridor and the branching interior corridor, turn a sharp corner into the branching corridor, and proceed approximately one-quarter of the length of the Cabaret Room to the single door that connected the branching corridor to the exterior of the building. This complex navigation was not atypical for the building; a number of other event and services spaces were scattered throughout the rest of the building, with some rooms leading into each other, some leading into interior hallways, and some leading to the outside of the building. A partial second story covered approximately the southern third of the building, sitting above the main entrance, Zebra Room, and main dining room; it held two more small event rooms made of six smaller rooms conjoined, collectively labeled the Crystal Rooms.
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