Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire Totally Explained

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City on March 25, 1911, was the largest industrial disaster in the history of the city of New York, causing the death of 148 garment workers who either died from the fire or jumped to their deaths. The fire led to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards and helped spur the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, which fought for better working conditions for sweatshop workers in that industry. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Building, also known as the Asch Building and as the Brown Building, survives and was named a National Historic Landmark.

The company

The Triangle Shirtwaist Company, owned by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, occupied the top three floors of the ten-story Asch building in New York City at the intersection of Greene Street and Washington Place, just east of Washington Square.
   The company employed approximately 500 workers, mostly young immigrant women from Italy and Eastern Europe. Some of the women were as young as twelve or thirteen and worked fourteen-hour shifts during a 60-hour to 72-hour workweek, sewing clothes for a wage of $1.50 per week (approximately $30-40 per week in 2006 dollars), which was less than 10% of the average wage level at the time.
   The Triangle Shirtwaist Company had already become well-known outside the garment industry by 1911: the massive strike by women's shirtwaist makers in 1909, known as the Uprising of 20,000, began with a spontaneous walkout at the Triangle Company.
   While the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union negotiated a collective bargaining agreement covering most of those workers after a four-month strike, Triangle Shirtwaist refused to sign the agreement.
   The conditions of the factory were typical of the time. Flammable textiles were stored throughout the factory, scraps of fabric littered the floors, patterns and designs on sheets of tissue paper hung above the tables, smoking was common, illumination was provided by open gas lighting, and there were no fire extinguishers.

The fire

In the afternoon of March 25, 1911, a fire began on the eighth floor, possibly sparked by a lighted match or a cigarette. A New York Times article also theorized that the fire may have been started by the engines running the sewing machines in the building. To this day, no one knows whether it was accidental or intentional. Most of the workers who were alerted on the tenth and eighth floors were able to evacuate. However the warning about the fire didn't reach the ninth floor in time.
   The ninth floor had only two doors leading out. One stairwell was already filling with smoke and flames by the time the seamstresses realized the building was ablaze. The other door had been locked, ostensibly to prevent workers from stealing materials or taking breaks and to keep out union organizers.
   The single exterior fire escape, a flimsy, poorly-anchored iron structure, soon twisted and collapsed under the weight of people trying to escape. The elevator also stopped working, cutting off that means of escape, partly because the panicked workers tried to save themselves by jumping down the shaft to land on the roof of the elevator.
   Sixty-two of the women who died did so when, realizing there was no other way to avoid the flames, they broke windows and jumped to the pavement nine floors below, much to the horror of the large crowd of bystanders gathering on the street level. Others pried open the elevator doors and tumbled down the elevator shaft. Of the jumpers, a single survivor was found close to drowning in water collecting in the elevator shaft. The fallen bodies and falling victims made it difficult for the fire department to reach the building.
   The remainder waited until smoke and fire overcame them. The fire department arrived quickly but was unable to stop the flames, as there were no ladders available that could reach beyond the sixth floor. The ultimate death toll was 148, including 141 who died at the scene and seven survivors who later died at hospitals.

The aftermath

The company's owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, had fled to the building's roof when the fire began and survived. They were later put on trial, at which Max Steuer, counsel for the defendants, managed to destroy the credibility of one of the survivors, Kate Alterman, by asking her to repeat her testimony a number of times — which she did, without altering a single word. Steuer argued to the jury that Alterman and probably other witnesses had memorized their statements and might even have been told what to say by the prosecutors. The defense also stressed that the prosecution had failed to prove that the owners knew the exit doors were locked at the time in question. The jury acquitted the owners. However, they lost a subsequent civil suit in 1913, and plaintiffs won compensation in the amount of $75 per deceased victim. Rose Schneiderman, a prominent socialist and union activist, said in a speech at the memorial meeting held in the Metropolitan Opera House on April 2, 1911, to an audience largely made up of the well-heeled members of the Women's Trade Union League, a group that had provided moral and financial support for the Uprising of 20,000:
Others in the community, and in particular in the ILGWU, drew a different lesson from events: working with local Tammany Hall officials, such as Al Smith and Robert F. Wagner, and progressive reformers, such as Frances Perkins, the future Secretary of Labor in the Roosevelt administration, who had witnessed the fire from the street below, they pushed for comprehensive safety and workers’ compensation laws. The ILGWU leadership formed bonds with those reformers and politicians that would continue for another forty years, through the New Deal and beyond.

The building

The Asch building survived the fire and was refurbished. Real estate speculator and philanthropist Frederick Brown later bought the building and subsequently donated the structure to New York University in 1929, where it's now known as the Brown Building of Science. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was named a National Historical Landmark in 1991.,
The building also was listed as a New York City Landmark in 2003.
The factory is now a part of New York University and has been reconstructed into the chemistry building. Two plaques in the front of the building commemorate the women who lost their lives in the fire.

References in popular culture

The disaster was the subject of a 1978 movie, The Triangle Factory Fire Scandal
The disaster has also inspired a musical, Rags
The band Rasputina wrote a song about the fire called "My Little Shirtwaist Fire"
Lois Lowry wrote about the tragedy in her book 'The Silent Boy'
Katharine Weber used it as the basis for her novel 'Triangle'
The poet Robert Pinsky references the tragedy in his poem 'Shirt'
Playwright Susan Lupo wrote her play "From Ashes to Dust" about the tragedy.
Mary Jane Auch's novel 'Ashes of Roses' was based upon the disaster
New York rock band The Brandos wrote and recorded a song about the fire: Triangle Fire (on their album "Over The Border"; 2006)
Ralph Bakshi's American Pop references the tragedy
In his recent novel Specimen Days, Michael Cunningham writes of a 'Mannahatta' factory that comes to an end similar to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, but calls it 'Mannahatta' to comply with chronology.

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