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After Years, Triangle Shirtwaist

112
Fire Victims Get a Memorial
The 1911 fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York killed
146 workers, mostly young immigrant women, and galvanized
the U.S. labor movement.

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Among the hundreds gathered as a memorial to the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist
Factory fire was unveiled was Serphin Maltese, whose grandmother and two aunts
died in the fire. Lexi Parra for The New York Times

By Lola Fadulu

Oct. 11, 2023

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911 was one of the most
notorious fires in New York City history, trapping workers,
primarily young immigrant women, who had endured poor
conditions on the job in a burning building they could not escape.
In all, 146 workers died in the blaze.

The fire helped galvanize a budding U.S. labor movement, but for
decades, the only memorial to its victims in the Greenwich Village
neighborhood where the factory once stood was a bronze plaque.
Until now.

On Wednesday, a striking memorial was unveiled at the building

that once housed the factory, at an event that drew descendants of
the victims and a range of public officials, including the acting
labor secretary of the United States and the governor of New York.

Gov. Kathy Hochul said that New York was “the birthplace of the
workers’ rights movement because of what happened right on this
block. That is something we tout to the rest of the world.”

The memorial — which features horizontal stainless-steel plates on

two sides of the building bearing the victims’ names and ages and a
reflective panel with survivor and eyewitness testimony — was the
result of more than a decade of work from the Remember the
Triangle Fire Coalition, a group made up of labor advocates and
victims’ relatives.

The new memorial was more than a decade in the making. Its dedication event drew
labor advocates, public officials and victims’ descendants. Lexi Parra for The New York
Times

“It is gratifying for all the family members of those who died in this
tragic fire to know that through the memorial, this and future
generations will learn about the fire and its significance in labor
history,” Suzanne Pred Bass said during the dedication ceremony,
which drew a crowd of hundreds. Two of her great-aunts worked at
the factory, and one of them, Rosie Weiner, died in the fire.

The building where the factory once stood is now owned by New
York University and is used mainly for its biology and chemistry
laboratories.

A second phase of the memorial, which will be completed this

winter, will feature a stainless steel ribbon reaching up to the ninth
floor of the building, from which more than 50 of the workers
jumped to their deaths.

The fire broke out on the eighth floor on March 25, 1911. There were
no overhead sprinklers in the factory, and the flames spread
rapidly. The factory did not conduct fire drills, and its managers
were slow to notify workers of the fire; they had also locked a door
to one of the staircases, preventing many of the workers from
escaping.

Though the factory’s employees worked on the eighth, ninth and Editors’ Picks

tenth floors of the building, the Fire Department’s ladders reached

Help! I Was Denied
only as high as the sixth. Workers filed onto a poorly constructed Boarding on a
Cruise, and I Wasn’t
fire escape that collapsed. the Only One.

Most of the victims were young immigrant women from Eastern The Average
Human Body
Europe and Italy who worked as many as 84 hours a week for as Temperature Is Not
little as $7. 98.6 Degrees

It’sNot Enough to
“We can imagine the black plume of smoke up in the air, the flames Love Disney. They
that spread from floor to floor, the panic of the workers who ran Want to Live
Disney.
and found closed exits and broken fire escapes,” Julie Su, the acting
labor secretary, said Wednesday. “Their cries for help and then the
thud of bodies as they began to jump one after another.”

Ms. Su noted that one of the people who had “looked on in horror”
as the building burned was Frances Perkins, who happened to be
nearby and who went on to become the first woman to serve as
labor secretary.

After the fire, New York began requiring automatic sprinklers in

tall buildings and fire drills in large workplaces.

Several speakers alluded to the worker protections the fire helped

usher in, including safe working conditions, fair wages and the
right to organize.

“Tragically, many of these protections are being eroded by

unscrupulous employers as greed continues to endanger workers,”
Lynne Fox, the president of Workers United, said.

Speakers mentioned the SAG-AFTRA and United Automobile

Workers members who are currently on strike, and those working
to unionize at Starbucks, Amazon, Trader Joe’s and elsewhere.

The memorial bears the names and ages of the 146 workers, mostly young immigrant
women, who died in the fire. Lexi Parra for The New York Times

“So many of the changes that have happened in this great city have
happened as a result of tragedy, and that is not the way that it
should happen,” said Rebecca Damon, executive director for labor
policy for SAG-AFTRA’s New York local.

“But when it does happen, New Yorkers say, ‘No, we will not accept
this and we will give dignity to workers,’” Ms. Damon said.

The Triangle Shirtwaist memorial was designed by Richard Joon

Yoo and Uri Wegman, who won a design competition in 2013. New
York State offered $1.5 million for the memorial, and labor unions
and foundations also offered financial support.

Erica Lansner, 65, who attended the ceremony with her cousins,
said that it was “a great honor” to see their great-aunt Fannie
Lansner’s name etched on the memorial and to know that she was
not only a victim but also “part of a legacy of change in labor
history and fire regulations.”

Her great-aunt, an immigrant from Lithuania, helped bring other

women to safety before the elevator stopped working, Ms. Lansner
said. She jumped to her own death once it became clear that she
could not escape.

Rob del Castillo, 57, was there on Wednesday to honor his great-
unt Josie, who had come from Sicily and was just 20 years old
when she died in the fire.

“It is incredibly poignant and compelling,” he said of the memorial.

“It’s also a reminder that although we’ve come a long way as far as
workers’ rights, in some respects we still have a long way to go.”

Elizabeth Yuan contributed reporting.

Lola Fadulu is a general assignment reporter on the Metro desk of The Times. She was
part of a team that was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2023 for coverage of New York
City’s deadliest fire in decades. More about Lola Fadulu

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