NYC★ WORKS
CELEBRATING LABOR IN THE BIG APPLE
NEVER FORGET: Students placed fl owers for each victim of the fi re during the 2018 event memorializing the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fi re, which killed 146 factory workers back
in 1911. Remember the Triangle File Coalition
Remembering a fi re that changed the city
Locals, unions mourn the lives lost in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory blaze
BRONX TIMES REPORTER, M BTR ARCH 15-21, 2019 13
BY MAYA HARRISON
They’re remembering these
victims more than a century
after their deaths changed
history.
Families and members
of the Workers United/SEIU
will gather on March 25 at
Washington Place and Greene
Street — the site of the former
Asch Building, whose
top three fl oors were once occupied
by the Triangle Shirtwaist
Company — for the
108th anniversary of the 1911
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory
fi re, one of the deadliest industrial
disasters in U.S. history.
On March 25, 1911, a fi re
killed 146 factory workers in
the building, which lacked a
sprinkler system and had several
doors sealed shut to prevent
theft, according to the
New York Daily News.
Family members will read
the names of perished workers
— nearly all immigrant
girls aged 13 to 23 — commemorating
their lives by placing
fl owers at the sight of the tragedy
while a bell tolls.
During the memorial
event, a fi re-truck ladder will
be raised to the sixth fl oor of
the building, the highest point
the ladder could reach in 1911,
though the fi re engulfed the
eighth, ninth, and 10th fl oors.
More than 40 of the trapped
workers burned inside the factory,
while others fell and died
trying to escape through the
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