Club 47 Kept Its Number When It Moved to Palmer Street

Down a narrow lane off Church Street in Harvard Square, a doorway at 47 Palmer Street leads into Club Passim. It opened in 1958 as Club 47, named for its first address at 47 Mount Auburn Street, and began as a jazz spot. In its first year it had a young Boston University student named Joan Baez singing on Tuesday nights. The club became a center of the Cambridge folk revival; Tom Rush played here, and Bob Dylan is said to have sung between sets in the early sixties just to say he had played the room. When it moved to Palmer Street in 1963, the city assigned the new door the number 47 to keep the name true. Club 47 closed in 1968. New owners reopened the space as Passim in 1969, and it runs today as a nonprofit music venue and school.