On the 25th of March, 1911, a fire began at the premises of the Triangle Waist Company
in New York City.
What started as a small blaze in a bin full of fabric scraps soon turned into an all-consuming
blaze that gutted the top floors of the building.
Before it could be extinguished, more than a hundred workers would lose their lives,
in what was at the time the worst industrial accident in the history of New York.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory occupied the upper floors of the Asch Building near Washington
Square Park.
Today, this building is known as the Brown Building, and is owned by New York University.
When it was first built in 1901, however, its main use was industrial.
Many garment makers took up residence in the building, attracted by its central location
and the fact that it was advertised as fireproof.
The Triangle Waist Company’s main product was a type of woman’s blouse known as a
“shirtwaist”.
These usually featured a collar and buttons down the front, but were otherwise fairly
simple; the kind of functional but fashionable garment that a woman might wear in the workplace
at the time.
The shirtwaist factory occupied the top three floors of the Asch Building – floors eight,
nine and ten.
Crammed into this space were hundreds of workers.
The factory employed many immigrant workers – mostly Italian and Jewish women and girls.
In many cases these people were new to the country and keen to take whatever jobs were
available.
The working conditions were undeniably poor.
Work stations were crowded very close together, and the factory floors had little ventilation.
In summer the space would become swelteringly hot – particularly as workers would be surrounded
on all sides by the fabric they were working with.
Scraps carpeted the floor of their work area, and huge swathes of material hung from lines
above their heads.
At around 4:40pm on the 25th of March, workers noticed a faint fiery glow in a bin full of
fabric scraps.
Although it has never been conclusively determined, this might have been a discarded match or
cigarette.
As they watched, the bin burst into flames… flames which licked upwards and ignited the
tissue paper templates that were hanging overhead.
Burning scraps of tissue paper fluttered across the factory floor, landing on and igniting
stacks of fabric, scraps bins and other flammable materials.
Within seconds, what began as a tiny fire had become an inferno blazing its way through
the 8th floor of the building.
A bookkeeper there used a telephone to contact workers on the 10th floor and warn them of
the fire, providing them with a few extra seconds to evacuate.
There was, however, no fire alarm, nor any other way to alert workers on the 9th floor,
who learned of the fire only when smoke and flames arrived on their floor.
Terrified workers scrambled to evacuate… but found that their options were limited.
Of two available staircases, one had been locked by the foreman on duty as a precaution
against theft by employees.
This foreman, incidentally, was among the first to leave the building down the other
staircase… taking the key to the second stairwell door with him.
Though some workers were able to escape down the unlocked set of stairs, this route was
soon blocked by the spreading smoke and flames.
Unable to go down to ground level, many took the counter-intuitive decision to flee upwards
to the roof.
The majority of those who took refuge on the roof would ultimately survive.
Freight elevators represented another possible escape route for workers trapped by the fire.
Two elevator operators (Joseph Zito and Gaspar Mortillalo) made three trips up to the 9th
floor of the factory while the fire burned around them.
They were only able to make three trips before both of their elevators became unusable.
In the case of Gaspar's elevator this was due to its rails warping from the heat of
the fire.
In the case of Joseph's elevator, this was due to workers on the burning floors above
prying open elevator doors and leaping down into the shaft to escape the flames.
The weight and impact of their bodies on the top of the elevator car disabled it completely.
This left only one option for the remaining trapped employees: the external fire escape
bolted onto the outside of the building.
This was a flimsy structure, entirely unsuited to a building of such high occupancy.
It was also in extremely poor condition, and did not extend all of the way to the ground.
This meant that workers pouring out of the building onto the fire escape had nowhere
to go.
As more and more people congregated on the metal steps, the weight became too much for
the steps to bear.
The fire escape twisted and peeled away from the building.
Around 20 people were on the steps when they finally failed – the majority of them fell
to their death.
A few were left clinging to the broken remains of the fire escape with no way to move either
up or down until the smoke and flames overwhelmed them.
Though the fire department was on scene within minutes, firefighters found themselves unable
to effectively fight the flames or rescue trapped workers.
The ladders they were equipped with extended only to the sixth floor of the building – two
floors short of where they were needed.
With no hope of rescue and all possible routes of escape closed to them, scores of workers
were left with no choice but to jump from the windows of the factory.
A witness, Louis Waldman, described the scene: "...the police had thrown up a cordon around
the area and the firemen were helplessly fighting the blaze.
The eighth, ninth, and tenth stories of the building were now an enormous roaring cornice
of flames.
Horrified and helpless, the crowds — I among them — looked up at the burning building,
saw girl after girl appear at the reddened windows, pause for a terrified moment, and
then leap to the pavement below...
This went on for what seemed a ghastly eternity.
Occasionally a girl who had hesitated too long was licked by pursuing flames and, screaming
with clothing and hair ablaze, plunged like a living torch to the street.
Life nets held by the firemen were torn by the impact of the falling bodies..."
The fire was eventually extinguished, and firemen began the grim task of searching the
gutted building for survivors.
There were few.
One of them was a 21-year-old man named Hymen Meshel, who had been working on the 8th floor
when the fire began.
He had survived by smashing his way through the glass door to the elevator shaft and sliding
down the elevator cables – severely injuring his hands in the process.
He had then taken refuge in the basement, which flooded with water from the firefighting
effort until he was almost completely submerged.
Rescuers found him there hours later, once the fire had finally been extinguished.
Hymen was extremely fortunate to survive.
Many of those who had been working around him when the fire began did not.
In total, 146 people died as a result of the fire.
In the immediate aftermath of the fire the company's owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris
(both of whom had survived the fire by escaping to the roof when it began), were charged with
manslaughter.
After a trial, during which they cast doubt on the credibility of many of the survivors,
they were found not guilty of these criminal charges.
It was only later that a civil suit ruled against them, finding that they had caused
multiple wrongful deaths.
They were ordered to pay $75 compensation to each victim - the equivalent of a payout
of around $2,000 today.
Just a few years after the fire, Max Blanck was arrested for knowingly locking fire escape
doors in another factory during working hours.
He was given the minimum possible fine for this infraction, and neither of the factory
owners ever faced any further consequences for the deaths their negligence had caused.
The fire did, however, inspire others to make some positive changes.
In the years that followed New York was at the forefront of workers’ rights, passing
numerous bills and developing regulations to ensure decent working conditions and prevent
a repeat of the tragedy.
As a direct result of the fire, the American Society of Safety Professionals was founded
in New York later that same year.
Over the course of more than a century it has worked tirelessly to develop and implement
effective, standardised safe working practises in a range of industries across the country.
Though American workplaces have changed beyond recognition over the course of the last century,
this particular legacy of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire continues to save lives.
Though the building has since been restored and repurposed, the fire remains a vital piece
of New York’s history.
The memory of it is kept alive by the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition – a group of
more than 200 individuals and businesses who are determined that the loss of more than
a hundred lives in 1911 should not be forgotten, and should not be in vain.