The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire was in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of a borough of New York City, Manhattan, just east of Washington State Park. This tragedy occurred on March 25, 1911, being one of the deadliest industrial disasters in U.S. history. Many deaths, mainly being Italian or Jewish immigrant women aged 14-23, occurred by the fire, jumping off the building, or smoke inhalation. The fire caused 146 deaths of garment workers— 123 women and 23 men, and 78 non-fatal injuries (Sweatshop Tragedy Ignites Fight for Workplace Safety). Later renamed the “Brown Building”, the factory was located on the 8th to 10th floor of the Asch Building, named after the developer Joseph Asch, which had been built in 1901. Owned by Max Blanck and Issac Harris, the factory produced women’s blouses, also called “shirtwaists”. These “shirtwaists” were an American trend during that time and symbolized women’s liberation, being a combination of a waist and a shirt while normal womenswear was layered and bulky. Workers employed in the factory were mostly immigrant women, who worked 7 hours daily with an additional 9 hours on Saturdays. These 500 women earned $7 to $12 weekly, which is equivalent to $236 to $405 weekly in 2024 currency (Wagner, 2021). The owners of the factory, Blanck and Harris claimed to have hired immigrant women because men worked less and were more likely to unionize against them. These garment workers were poor, young, and had little access to education.
An eyewitness of the tragedy, William Gunn Sheperd said “I learned a new sound–a more horrible sound than description can picture. It was the thud of a speeding, living body on a stone sidewalk. Thud-dead, thud-dead, thud-dead, thud-dead. Sixty-two thud-deads. I call them that, because the sound and the thought of death came to me each time, at the same instant. There was plenty of chance to watch them as they came down. The height was eighty feet.” (Stein, 1977)
The fire had flared up in a trash bin under a cutters’ table on the 8th floor at approximately 4:40 pm on a Saturday, March 25, 1911, as the workday was ending. The first fire alarm was sent 5 minutes after the fire started, by a passerby on Washington Place who saw the smoke. Both owners were present with their children invited to the factory that afternoon. The Fire Marshal came to a conclusion that the fire was caused by the disposal of a lighted cigarette butt in the scrap bin with two months worth of cuttings. Cutters were known to sneak cigarettes in the factory, although smoking was banned (Triangle Workplace Factory Fire). The scrap bin was wooden with a steel trim, which was the only thing that was not flammable other than the hundred pounds of scraps left over from several thousand shirtwaists. The Insurance Monitor, a major industry publication, noted that shirtwaists had recently gone out of style and that insuring them carried a high risk of “moral hazard.” Although Blanck and Harris, the factory owners, had a history of four suspicious fire insurance claims, investigators did not consider arson a factor in this particular case.
After seeing the smoke, a bookkeeper on the 8th floor of the Asch Building was able to warn workers on the 10th floor through telephone, but there was no means of contact with the 9th floor. David Von Drehle, an American journalist working for the Washington Post has estimated the number of women on the 9th floor to be approximately 250. One of these workers, who has luckily survived, Yetta Lubitz, was exiting the dressing room as other colleagues were rising from their seats. When she saw people crowding by the Greene Street door and heard a voice yell “Fire!”, the fire had simultaneously reached the 9th floor. Lubitz testified that many girls ran for the fire escape and realized all the doors were locked, leaving them no choice but to retreat into the dressing rooms (PBS). Merely four minutes later, the fire rapidly made its way through the whole floor, burning the shirtwaists covering the tables. Many workers ran from the dressing rooms to the Greene Street door, but Lubitz fled to the roof with her best friend Annie Gordon, assuming that the others had already evacuated. She was later saved by New York University students in less than five or six minutes.
The factory had a common practice of locking the doors to stairwells and exits, aimed toward preventing theft and unauthorized breaks. Many workers fled to the roof, going up the Greene Street stairway, jamming themselves into the elevator for as long as it still operated. After three minutes of the fire, the Greene Street stairway was unusable in both directions. Employees crowded into a single exterior fire escape, which collapsed from the fire, causing approximately 20 victims to fall nearly 100 feet and the remainder of the victims jumping to their deaths (Von Drehle, 2003). The ninth floor, which was barely over nine thousand square feet, was outfitted by Blanck and Harris with machines to manufacture their products. As the factory improved and the number of workers expanded, the two men were worried of union organizers who advocated for better working conditions for the garment workers, leading them to lock the workers inside as a preventive measure. The Fire department arrived quickly but was unable to stop the flames because their horse-drawn ladders only reached the 7th floor and the falling bodies prevented thei approach of the building. Years after the accident, a New York socialist assemblyman, Louis Waldman explained the scene: “Life nets held by the firemen were torn by the impact of the falling bodies. The emotions of the crowd were indescribable. Women were hysterical, scores fainted; men wept as, in paroxysms of frenzy, they hurled themselves against the police lines (Labor Lawyer).
Of the victims whose ages were known, the oldest was Providenzs Panno who was 43-years old, and the youngest were Kate Leone and Rosaria “Sara” Meltese who were 14-year olds. The causes of these deaths were confirmed to be mainly burns, asphyxiation, blunt impact injuries, or all three. The first person to jump off the Asch Building was a man, followed by a couple that jumped to their deaths after their last kiss. For identification by family, friends, and relatives, the body of victims were sent to Charities Pier, also known as Misery Lane, located at 26th Street and East River. Six victims were unidentified until 2011, when a historian Michael Hirsch completed his four-year research of newspaper articles to identify each victim by their names(Berger, 2011).
The owners of the company, Blanck and Harris, who were both Jewish immigrants, survived the fire by fleeing to the roof of the building when it began (Blakemore, Erin). They were brought to court on charges of first- and second-degree manslaughter, but eventually acquitted. Although they were required to pay $75 for each life lost, their insurance policy paid them $600,000, which is around $400 per life, giving the two men a profit from this tragedy (NYCdata). They continued to lock doors and exits two years later, getting fined for violating several safety codes. This event brought the Labor movement to life, bringing numerous laws on safety, breaks for workers, and wages into effect.
Nowadays, children read about the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in school textbooks without understanding what change it brought to the workplace. Even before the year 1991, workplace deaths weren’t uncommon, with an estimated number of 100 deaths every day on the job (AFL-CIO). During the accident, the building had no sprinkler system, later leading to legislation requiring the factory’s safety standards and the growth of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU), which was established to advocate for improved working conditions. This organization still remains as one of the most vivid symbols for the American labor movement, acting as a reminder to encourage a safe workplace environment for workers.
Work Cited:
AFL-CIO. “Triangle Shirtwaist Fire | AFL-CIO.” Aflcio.org, AFL-CIO, 2019, aflcio.org/about/history/labor-history-events/triangle-shirtwaist-fire
Berger, Joseph. “100 Years Later, the Roll of the Dead in a Factory Fire Is Complete.” The New York Times, 21 Feb. 2011, www.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/nyregion/21triangle.html
Blakemore, Erin. History, National Geographic, 25 Mar. 2020, web.archive.org/web/20210308122951/www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/triangle-shirtwaist-factory-fire-transformed-protections-american-workers
“Cornell University – ILR School – the Triangle Factory Fire.” Trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu, trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/victimsWitnesses/survivors.html
“Labor Lawyer : Waldman, Louis, B. 1892 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” Internet Archive, 2014, archive.org/details/laborlawyer
NYCdata. “NYCdata | Disasters.” Baruch.cuny.edu, 2021, baruch.cuny.edu/nycdata/disasters/fires-triangle_shirtwaist.html
OSHA. “The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire | Occupational Safety and Health Administration.” Osha.gov, 2011, www.osha.gov/aboutosha/40-years/trianglefactoryfire
PBS. “Triangle Fire | American Experience | PBS.” Pbs.org, 2018, www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/triangle/
Shepherd, William. “Cornell University – ILR School – the Triangle Factory Fire.” Trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu, 27 Mar. 1911, trianglefire.ilr.cornell.edu/primary/testimonials/ootss_WilliamShepherd.html
Stein, Leo. Out of the Sweatshop. The Struggle for Industrial Democracy. Ed. By Leon Stein. New York : Quadrangle/New York Times Book Co., 1977. “Sweatshop Tragedy Ignites Fight for Workplace Safety | American Postal Workers Union.” American Postal Workers Union, 29 Feb. 2004, apwu.org/news/sweatshop-tragedy-ignites-fight-workplace-safety/
“Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire – Wikipedia.” En.m.wikipedia.org, en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire
Von Drehle, Dave, and Internet Archive. Triangle : The Fire That Changed America. Internet Archive, New York : Atlantic Monthly Press, 2003, archive.org/details/trianglefirethat00vond
Wagner, Ella. “Triangle Shirtwaist Factory (Brown Building) (U.S. National Park Service).” Www.nps.gov, National Park Service, 30 Mar. 2021, www.nps.gov/places/triangle-shirtwaist-factory-brown-building.html
VICTORIA KIM
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- VICTORIA KIM
- VICTORIA KIM
- VICTORIA KIM
