Ceremony Remembers Victims Who Perished in Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

A bell tolled 146 times on a sunny but chilly day on March 25 in Greenwich Village.

On that date, 114 years ago, an 18 minute fire that erupted in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire at the intersection of Greene and Washington Place, where 123 women, mostly young Jewish and Italian immigrants, and 43 men perished in 1911.

The fire remains a vivid experience for families of the survivors and the deceased who attended the memorial and it continues as a touchstone for the labor movement that was galvanized by the tragedy and resulted in sweeping worker safety reform at the time.

The deadly fire is considered the worst industrial disaster in New York City and until 9-11, it was the deadliest fire in city history.

Several hundred people, including Fire Commissioner Robert Tucker and some descendants of survivors gathered outside the ten story iron and steel building. Although today it houses classrooms and offices of NYU, its exterior is largely unchanged from that tragic day in 1911 when 500 people, mostly immigrants who lived nearby, toiled in a factory sweatshop on its upper floors.

Michael Lupinacci’s great great aunt Santina Salemi died in the fire at the age of 24. She and her immediate family came to America in about 1898 from the town of Cerda, in Sicily and settled on Cherry Street in the Lower East Side. Santina and Frances, a cousin, and a friend went to work together to the factory day to spend long hours hunched over machines stitching fashionable women’s blouses known as shirtwaists. Only Frances survived. “The families thought that when we got to America we are going to make sure our kids are safe. Then they came to America and they died anyway.” Lupinacci stated. The bodies of the dead, many burned beyond recognition, were laid out at a pier on the west side. Santina was identified by the darn in her stocking her mother had done the night before, Lupinacci said.

Suzanne Pred Bass’s great aunt Katie Weiner testified at the criminal trial in which Triangle owners Max Blank and Isaac Harris were charged with manslaughter. Pred Bass said her great grandmother came to the country with Katie and her seven other children in 1903 from Zhitomer, a city in the Ukraine. Katie and her sister Rose both worked at Triangle; Rose died at age 23. Katie, who accounts of the day said was one of the last survivors to make it out alive by jumping onto the roof of a descending elevator, provided moving testimony during the trial and reenacted trying to escape from the 9th floor, only to discover that the doors had been locked.

Pred Bass’ mother who was four, was taken by her own mother to the pier to help identify Rose. Pred Bass is one of two descendants of those lost in the fire on the 14-member Board of the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition.

“No workers should be left to suffer and we should remember their legacy,” said Roberta Reardon, NYS Commissioner of Labor. “Today, we mourn the 146 workers tragically killed 114 years ago. But we also marvel at the millions of lives that have been saved since the fire, thanks to the strong laws and regulations in place to protect our workforce.”

Edgar Romney, Secretary Treasurer of Workers United, who introduced a host of speakers and performers that included political representatives, labor leaders, and NYU officials.

Some speakers worried that the cuts the Trump administration is proposing will erode many of the worker protection laws and regulations that were adopted by popular acclaim in the wake of the tragic fire more than a century ago.

FDNY Commissioner Robert Tucker, stated that Triangle changed the course of fire safety in New York City. One year after the fire, the city formed the Bureau of Fire Prevention which remains an enforcement arm of the FDNY to this day. “We honor the victims of the tragedy by enforcing safety today,” Tucker said.

The memorial at the base of the building, which was only unveiled in 2023, is the result of a collaborative effort between NYU, which owns the building, and the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition. The names and ages of those who died in the fire are seen in a dark reflective panel. Flowers were placed by the names after they were recited during the ceremony at the tone of a fire bell from Ladder Company 20, today housed on Lafayette St. and one of the fire houses that responded to the fire back in 1911

Rose Imperato, a member of the Coalition finds that today’s young people “totally get” Triangle’s relevance.

“The only thing that (the workers) did wrong that day was to show up at work. They were young girls at work, instead of being at school,” Imperato said. The students she meets are the same age or not much younger than many of the young woman who died. She recounted one local public school which dedicated a day to the memory of this tragedy, and stated she gets calls from across the country and world inquiring about the Coalition and the Triangle Fire.

Amid the tragedy, there were some heroes. An elevator operator named Joseph Zito, an Italian immigrant, is credited with saving over 100 workers while he continued to run his tiny elevator even as the flames grew more intense, eventually burning the cables to the elevator. Shortly after the late afternoon fire erupted, an NYU law professor named Frank Sommers and his students, who were in an adjoining building, saw some of the clerical workers on a tenth floor roof and lowered ladders enabling them to climb across to safety. Most of those who died worked in the sweatshop on the ninth floor.

Pred Bass said in her experience, many people find a personal connection with the Triangle story, one that is related to power and inequity, a theme which she feels is also relevant to today. It is about workplace rights, the unfair treatment of women and immigrants, and the struggle for respect, she says. Out of this crisis came hope. “It still has that power,” she said.