A fire at New York’s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory killed 146 people on this day in history, March 25, 1911, and led to many new workplace safety reforms.
The fire broke out on the 8th floor of the Asch Building, home of the Triangle Waist Company, Cornell University’s Triangle Fire online exhibit notes.
The victims ranged in age from 14 to 43, although most were in their teens and early 20s.
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The oldest victim was 43-year-old Providenza Panno, who was born in Italy and had lived in the United States for six years at the time of her death, Cornell University said.
The two youngest victims were 14-year-olds, Kate Leone and Rosaria Maltese. Leone was born in the United States; Maltese was born in Italy and lived in the United States for four years.
The vast majority of the 146 people who died were women, most of whom were recent immigrants to the United States from Eastern Europe and Italy.
A rooftop view of the Asch Building at Washington and Greene Streets after the deadly fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York on March 25, 1911. (FPG/Getty Images)
Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, two Russian immigrants known as the “shirt kings,” owned the Triangle factory.
“Shirt-waist” XIX. At the end of the century and the XX. It was originally a popular women’s garment, according to the Fashion Institute of Design and Marketing (FIDM) website.
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“Mostly worn by young women, the shirtwaist was tied with a dark-colored skirt and accessorized with a belt or belt,” said FIDM.
A shirtwaist, pictured here, was a popular garment for women in the 20th century. (Alay)
In 1901, Blanck and Harris moved their company to the 8th floor of the newly completed Asch Building in New York, the Cornell website said.
Although Joseph J. Asch, the owner of the building, insisted that the building was fireproof, he did not have the number of stairs to exit the building.
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“Over the objections of the superintendent, the architect requested and obtained an exception to the rule requiring three enclosed stairways per 10,000 square feet of the building,” the Cornell website said.
“He was only allowed to put in two ladders, with the fire escape at the back to serve as a third ladder and therefore a fire escape.”
Relatives and friends of victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company deaths lined up to identify their loved ones. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
In less than a decade, the Triangle Waist Company would expand to the 9th and 10th floors of the Asch Building, employing hundreds of people, mostly immigrants, in a contractor-type system.
“The factory owners only dealt with subcontractors, who negotiated the price of the goods and employed their workers on the same premises. The triangle owners did not keep payroll for these workers, and never knew exactly how many were in the building at any given time,” Cornell said. websites
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The wages of these workers were usually very low, and the conditions in the factory were harsh.
Blanck and Harris “were staunchly anti-union,” and even fired workers who were interested in union organizing.
“They were known for their disregard for fire and safety precautions, the ordeal of a bag search before employees left for the day, and the strict discipline imposed during work hours,” the Cornell website said.
The victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire were placed on the street in front of the building. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
On March 25, the owners’ lack of respect for workplace safety came to the fore when a fire broke out and quickly spread through three floors of the factory, killing 146 of the approximately 500 workers in a matter of minutes.
To this day, it is still unknown what caused the fire, although it is believed to have been caused by an improperly discarded cigarette, Encyclopedia Britannica says.
“Something has to be done. We have to turn this into some sort of victory, a constructive action.”
The firefighters who arrived at the scene found that the doors of the factory were locked and did not open to the outside, it was impossible for them to open the doors amid the crush of people trying to escape.
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Also, the fire truck’s stairs did not go past the sixth floor, making a rescue impossible.
Many workers tried to kill themselves to escape the fire, and the nets used by the firemen were not strong enough to catch them.
Firefighters discovered that neither ladders nor hoses were tall enough to reach the blaze on the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors of the Asch Building in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village. (George Rinhart/Corbis via Getty Images)
The fire was the deadliest workplace incident in New York City until the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
In December 1911, Blanck and Harris were both tried—and acquitted—of murder. It could not be proved that the two men were aware that the factory door was locked.
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On March 11, 1914, nearly three years after the fire, the owner of the Asch Building settled 23 individual civil lawsuits among the families of those killed in the fire, according to Famous-Trials.com.
Crowds of people line the streets, waiting to identify the bodies of immigrant workers who died in the Triangle fire in New York City on March 25, 1911. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
The payouts were about $75 per person killed, roughly $2,200 in 2023.
The deaths of 146 were not in vain, however, as the Triangle fire led to a number of reforms, new laws and policies to protect workers.
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Frances Perkins, who became Secretary of Labor under President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 and became the first female cabinet secretary, saw the fire and its aftermath firsthand.
The disaster made him realize that “something has to be done. We have to turn this into some kind of victory, some kind of constructive action,” the Labor Department website said.
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“Perkins and other leaders with direct experience of the Triangle fire, like New York Governor Al Smith, soon helped legislate new workplace safety standards in New York State, setting an example for the rest of the country,” he said. Department of Labor
Christine Rousselle is a lifestyle correspondent for Fox News Digital.