The New York City Triangle Factory Fire

By Leigh Benin, Rob Linné, Adrienne Sosin and 3 more

On March 25, 1911, flames rapidly consumed everything within the Triangle Waist Company factory, killing 146 workers. The victims, mostly young Jewish and Italian immigrant women, died needlessly due to unsafe working conditions, such as locked or blocked doors, narrow stairways, faulty fire escapes, and a lack of sprinklers. Until September 11, 2001, the Triangle fire was the deadliest workplace disaster in New York City history. Mass grief and outrage spread from New York's Lower East Side across the country. Garment union membership swelled, and New York politics shifted dramatically toward reform, paving the way for the New Deal and, ultimately, the workplace standards expected today. Through historic images, The New York City Triangle Factory Fire honors the victims' sacrifice and serves as a reminder of the ongoing struggle for the dignity of all working people.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Sep 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781439639115

Leigh Benin

Leigh Benin, Rob Linn", Adrienne Sosin, and Joel Sosinsky are cofounders of the Education and Labor Collaborative, an organization dedicated to teaching youth about the hidden labor heritage of the United States. The authors have worked closely with Workers United, which is the successor union to the historic International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), and HBO Documentary Films in researching this important history.

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INTRODUCTION

On Sunday, blazing newspaper headlines told of the Triangle factory fire that had killed more than 100 garment workers the day before—March 25, 1911. It was the largest workplace disaster in New York City history (and remained so until the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on the World Trade Center.) The exact number of workers who died in the Triangle fire was not immediately known. But even in an era when tens of thousands of workers a year perished in industrial accidents, the carnage at Triangle was shocking, especially because the vast majority of the victims were young women—many in their teens—from among the millions of Jewish and Italian immigrants who had come to America to work for a better