The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
Before we dive in to today’s History With Hope, a huge wet smoochy thank-you to Kate Czyzewski at Thunder Road Books and the ladies of the TR Book Club for making IRISH EYES their March book club pick! What fun we had!!
And thanks to the delightful Dannie Carter of A Novel Evening podcast in the UK for having me on to chat about the book. Speakeasies, Tammany Hall, WW1 - we covered A LOT. Plus a sneak peek at STARDUST (Coming Sept. 2024), the sequel to IRISH EYES, and who’s invited to my fantasy “novel evening.” Have a listen!
Onto history… !
Monday, March 25th marks the 113th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the deadliest workplace disaster in New York until 9/11. I write about the fire every year, not to dwell on tragedy but to do my bit to make sure that we don’t forget the brave women and girls whose sacrifice made our workplace lives a whole lot safer. The Triangle fire has always felt personal to me. From the time I attended the centennial commemoration ceremony at Washington Place and Greene Street in 2011, I felt called to write about it. But then my Aunt Priscilla Carey aka Dodie was a member of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union.1 She passed away in 2019, and I cherish her union card.
Housed in the Asch Building, today the Brown Building of New York University, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was one of the largest East Coast manufacturers of the shirtwaist, women’s blouse, a wardrobe staple for turn-of-the-century women from salesclerks and secretaries to socialites. Despite being housed in a modern (1901) skyscraper (10 floors) touted as fireproof, the factory’s unsafe workplace practices and conditions e.g., stairwells blocked with sewing machines, workrooms locked from the outside, and inoperable elevators created a tinderbox.
At 4:45 pm on Saturday, March 25, 1911,2 flames broke out on the Triangle’s eighth floor and quickly traveled through the ventilator shafts to engulf the ninth floor workroom and tenth floor offices. Within 30 minutes it was over, leaving 146 workers dead and 78 injured, most of them immigrant women and girls.
The fire was a watershed moment in the U.S. labor movement. Public protests led by the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union brought about many of the workplace safety reforms we take for granted today, such as sprinkler systems, fire drills, and an eight-hour workday.
To learn more about the Triangle Fire, read the article I wrote for The Irish Times and have a listen to my three-episode podcast, “The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911: An Emigrant’s Experience,” co-produced and co-written with Fin Dwyer of The Irish History Podcast. The pod follows two real-life factory workers, Annie Doherty, a Catholic from Co. Donegal, Ireland and Celia Walker, a Jew from Przemysl, Poland.
Lastly, enjoy this short excerpt from IRISH EYES.
146 Men and Girls Die in Waist Factory Fire;
Trapped High Up in Washington Place Building;
Street Strewn with Bodies; Piles of Dead Inside
—The New York Times, March 26, 1911
The fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory hit me hard and not only because it brought back The Windsor. Our Nora worked as a sewing machine operator on the factory’s ninth floor, a good job for a girl of seventeen, or so Pat and Kathleen saw it.
Around a quarter to five, I heard the first of a succession of sirens. I finished giving my customer her change and stepped outside to better discern their direction. Seeing Mrs. Katz pacing outside the bakery, I made my way over.
“A four-alarmer at least,” I said, for my years as a fireman’s wife had trained my ear. “Any idea where it is?”
She turned to face me, flour on her cheek and fear in her eyes. “The Triangle. My Lilith works there.”
I braced a hand to the bricks, feeling as if I’d been gutted. “So does our niece.”
We took a taxi to Washington Place, the plume of smoke in the sky thickening with every passing block. Our driver pulled up to the adjacent Washington Square Park, and my chest tightened, for the scene playing out was The Windsor Hotel, only worse.
The Asch building, which housed the factory on its upper floors, was banded by flames and belching black smoke. The first fire trucks had arrived. It was painfully apparent that the hoses were too short to reach the ninth floor, where most workers, including our girls, slaved for pittance pay.
Helpless, we waited in the park, cordoned off and packed with people, many of whom, like ourselves, had loved ones within. Anytime I spotted a man in uniform, I rushed up and demanded news, but not even the policemen stationed onsite seemed to know much.
“Auntie Rose.”
Nora pushed through the barricades and rushed up, Lilith with her. Neither girl seemed to have suffered so much as a singed eyelash. At the sight of her child, Mrs. Katz dissolved into a puddle, the tears she’d bravely held back rushing down her cheeks.
I clasped Nora close, my own eyes swimming. “I thought for sure…”
“The foreman sent Lily and me out for sandwiches. When we got back—” She pulled back to show me the crushed brown bag and burst into tears.
Nora and Lilith were among the fortunate few. Most of the fire’s one hundred and forty-six casualties, nearly all immigrant women and girls from Eastern Europe and Southern Italy, would come from the ninth floor. Some victims succumbed to the flames; others jumped. Clasping hands for courage, girls leapt in pairs, tearing through the rescue nets too fragile to hold them. Meanwhile, the factory owners, the so-called Shirtwaist Kings, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris and their coterie, climbed out their tenth-floor office and escaped onto the rooftop of the adjacent law school.
The fire dominated the news for months. It came to light that the factory had experienced four prior fires and been reported as unsafe to the city’s Building Department due to an insufficiency of working exits – fire escapes blocked by equipment and bolts of fabric – as well as workroom doors locked from the outside to prevent unauthorized breaks. Owner avarice, including denying employee requests to practice fire drills, had greatly contributed to the calamity.
For once, political allegiances took a back seat to justice. Nativist or newcomer, Christian or Jew, Protestant or Catholic, Republican or Democrat – the aggrieved public gathered in churches, synagogues, and, lastly, the streets. The International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union lobbied for a citywide day of remembrance for the dead, no, murdered girls. Labor unions, religious communities, social reform organizations, and political groups, including Tammany, joined forces to demand real progress in worker protections. Within a month of the fire, the New York State Factory Investigation Committee was created to review conditions in factories and sweatshops across the state. Joe lost no time in wrangling himself a seat on it, not that I begrudged him the appointment. With his first-hand knowledge of firefighting, he was ideally suited to do some good.
Looking back, I can’t say I was happy, but having finally given up the tug-of-war with Tammany for my husband, I was more at peace than I’d been in years.
And then, one damp December evening, everything changed.
Copyright Hope C. Tarr
You can pick up a signed copy of IRISH EYES at these booksellers:
Barnes & Noble Upper West Side, Manhattan
Barnes & Noble, Brick Plaza, NJ
Barnes & Noble, Holmdel, NJ
Book Culture, Manhattan (2 locations)
The Corner Bookstore, Manhattan
Posman Books Chelsea Marketplace, Manhattan
Thunder Road Books, Spring Lake, NJ
The Comfort Zone, Ocean Grove, NJ
Also, find IRISH EYES on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, Target, Walmart and wherever books are sold.
Share this free public post with other history lovers.
Not yet subscribed to History With Hope? You can fix that here.
Download my free IRISH EYES Book Club Guide to get your book party started!
Want me to Zoom in to your book group? Contact me here to schedule.
ILGWU merged with the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union in the 1990s to form the new Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE), now UNITE HERE.
In 1911, people weren’t working “for” the weekend but through it. Employees of esablishments like the Triangle routinely worked a six-and-a-half day week. Saturday, the “half day,” meant you clocked out at 5pm.