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
Caribbean L BQ ife, March 15–21, 2019 43
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
Continued on page 46