History Class Studies Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

On March 25, 1911, 146 mostly young immigrant women lost their lives in New York City's infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Nearly 100 years later, juniors in Fr. Luke Travers' American history classes at Delbarton offered a presentation on the devastating event that galvanized the American labor movement.

In 1911 the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was a typical overcrowded sweatshop in the heart of Manhattan, at 23-29 Washington Place, where employees received low wages for 12 hour shifts in dangerous working conditions that the famous fire exemplified. Doors were kept locked, excess fabric and trimmings created fire hazards, long work tables blocked escape, and rusted fire escapes collapsed under the weight of panicked workers. Even the city's fire department proved ineffectual, with firefighters arriving carrying ladders too short to reach the building's upper stories.

Around closing time on Saturday afternoon, March 25, 1911, fire broke out on one of the top floors of the Asch Building. Some lucky workers escaped to the street or roof but, reports one online source, "Within minutes, the quiet spring afternoon erupted into madness, a terrifying moment in time, disrupting forever the lives of young workers. By the time the fire was over, 146 of the 500 employees had died. The survivors were left to live and relive those agonizing moments. The victims and their families, the people passing by who witnessed the desperate leaps from ninth floor windows, and the City of New York would never be the same." In half an hour the fire was over, and one of the witnesses to the thirty minute nightmare was Francis Perkins who spent the rest of her life fighting for workers rights. Perkins ultimately was the U.S. Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945, and the first woman appointed to the U.S. Cabinet. The fire had become a pivotal event in her life.

Since many of the Triangle factory fire victims were recent Italian and European Jewish immigrants, Delbarton's memorial concluded with a reading by Director of Guidance Shelly Levine of the Kaddish, the Jewish Prayer of Mourning. Levine's reading was followed by an evocative violin solo by freshman Vito Brancatella '14, and a prayer recited by Pete Chambers '11.

As students entered the Fine Arts Center Theater for the Triangle memorial they were handed a printed quotation from author Gabriel Barcia Marquez: "Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers, and how one remembers it in order to recount it." A century later, Delbarton remembers the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory tragedy.