Pioneer Club opens.

Operated by Richard Earle, it is located in an alley off 819 Tremont Street at 1 Westfield Street. Initially a place to eat, sleep, and listen to music for railroad porters, waiters and chefs, it becomes a speakeasy during Prohibition. It is purchased by brothers Silas “Shag” and Balcom “Bal” Taylor in the late 1940s and becomes a private club, which is, according to Boston Globe reporter William Buchanan “Careless about the technicalities of closing time.” The club becomes popular with entertainers, who had finished performing at other clubs, including Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, George Shearing, Bessie Smith, Sarah Vaughn, Dinah Washington, and Lester Young. After Shag Taylor’s death in 1958,* the club is purchased by Lincoln Pope. The building is demolished to make way for urban renewal in July 1974.