Memorial Honors Triangle Shirtwaist Victims on 125th Anniversary of Horrific Fire

It’s been 125 years since the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of Saturday March 25, 1911, when the top three floors of the Asch Building at the northeast corner of Greene Street and Washington Place were consumed by flames and smoke.

It remains among the deadliest fires in NYC history.

When the conflagration was over, 146 people—most of them immigrant Jewish and Italian girls—were dead, with 76 more injured, and untold family members, devastated. The fire and its aftermath would be front page news for weeks, spark a major legal battle against the factory’s co-owners, Russian immigrants Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, who were themselves Jews. Many subsequent fire and worker safety reforms would follow.

The conflagration stands as New York City’s third most deadly, after 9/11 and the December 5, 1876 Brooklyn Theater Fire–or fourth deadliest if the more than 1,000 who died on the S.S. Slocum which burned on the East River–remains a labor movement, and historic Greenwich Village, touchstone. The annual memorial is held just steps from Washington Square Park each March 25. Remarkably, the Asch Building which was constructed in 1900-1901, survived. It was renamed the Brown Building and is a landmarked part of the NYU campus.

Andy Serra, a retired FDNY captain turned author used the backdrop of the deadly conflagration as the centerpiece of his novel, “Hell’s Hundred Acres” published last year. He spent nearly a dozen years as the commanding officer of Ladder 20, which answered the original call more than a century ago and participates in the memorial service to this day.

”There’s been other deadly fires but I think this one resonates because it happened on a beautiful spring day before hundreds of eye witnesses. There were photos of it as it happened and so many of the victims were young immigrant girls and women,” said Serra.

Labor unions, such as the organization once known as the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and now known as Unite Here after merging with the Hotel and Restaurant Employees union, remain heavily involved in the commemorations. The memorial is organized by the New York City Central Labor Council with participation by such storied Jewish labor groups as the Worker’s Circle (founded in 1900 as the Workmen’s Circle, Der Arbeter Ring in Yiddish).

The formal event began with the New York Labor Chorus belting out solidarity songs accompanied by an electronic, honky-tonk sounding piano. Historically, this isn’t an unusual event but for a stranger or tourist walking by, they might have thought they had stepped through time and onto a movie set with hundreds of crowd scene extras gathered for the ghost of Martin Ritt, the formerly blacklisted Jewish director of such labor-related films as “The Molly Maguires” (1970), “The Front” (1976) and “Norma Rae” (1979).

But no, this really was a rally of today, with a woman’s shirtwaist mounted on a protest stick and bright orange and black signs reading Jewish Labor Committee and not a catering truck in sight.

Even without warm sacred brew in hand, spirits were high for what is, of course, a generally solemn event. But that’s the paradox of memorials, be it a random Irish wake or other annual events like the NYPD, FDNY and 9/11 memorials, though none of those events also feature costumed performances from a musical, “Camicette Bianche,” about the tragedy being memorliazed, as this one did. “Camicette Bianche” is based on the true story of Clotilde Terranova, a Sicilian immigrant seamstress who died in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire.

Once again this year, a Ladder 20 truck extended its rescue ladder to the Asch Building’s sixth floor. At the time of the fire, the ladders were not long enough to reach the victims, which started on the eighth floor and spread to the ninth.

Serra related how firefighters stymied because ladders were to short to reach trapped victims, initially held life safety nets for the workers to jump into, but the force of the landing was so great that it tore the net from their hands. Most of the people from the eighth floor escaped and people on the tenth floor could head to the roof. But a delayed response to workers on the ninth floor meant most of them were trapped. “Most of the victims who jumped were on the night floor,” said Serra.

Other highlights of the ceremony, which was emceed by the elegant, silver-haired Edgar Romney, Secretary-Treasurer, Workers United, SEIU included the reading of the names and ages of the Triangle Shirtwaist victims, most of whom were young woman and a vigorous speech by yarmulke-clad Rabbi Sharon Klinebaum who, the crowd would learn, is also the wife of the speaker who preceded her, American Federation of Teachers President, Randi Weingarten.

Also speaking was former Acting U.S. Labor Secretary Julie Su, who today is New York City’s first-ever Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice.

“This fire inspired so many of the modern fire and workplace safety laws that are still on the books today,” noted Serra, who said the tragic fire still has lessons that are taught in the Fire Academy to this day. “In some ways it was the spark, no pun intended, that inspired so many of the New Deal worker reformers enacted by Gov. Al Smith and FDR.”