Italian Hall, built in 1908, stood on this site as the home of the Societa Mutua Beneficenza Italiana, which aided immigrants and others in need. Its first floor housed a saloon and an Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company store, while the second floor contained a main hall with a dining room, a barroom, and a stage. By December 1913, thousands of area copper miners had been on strike for five months, seeking union recognition, safer working conditions, shorter work days, and better pay. On Christmas Eve 1913, hundreds gathered on the second floor for a holiday party for strikers' families. As children filed to the stage to receive presents, someone shouted "Fire!" Although there was no fire, panic spread and people rushed toward the exit, with many trampled on the stairs. Officially, seventy-three people died, more than half of them children under ten. Despite a Congressional hearing and a coroner's inquest, the person who shouted the false alarm was never identified. When the building was razed in 1984, the archway from its main entrance was saved, and in 1989 the Village of Calumet, with help from Operating Engineers Local 324 and the Friends of Italian Hall, created a park dedicated to those who died in 1913.