“Well, the fire is over, the girls are dead, and as I write, the procession in honor of the unidentified dead is moving by under my windows. Now what is going to be done about it?” Martha Bensley Bruere
On March 25th, closing time approached and the employees of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, located in the Asch Building at the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place in Lower Manhattan, were finishing their soul-numbing labors. 275 of the employees were female, and many only teenagers, predominantly immigrant workers from the Yiddish, German and Italian communities. The workers began dressing at about 4:45, ready to leave after having worked overtime to augment a weekly salary that was normally about $6.00. They pulled on coats and hats amid the cramped work areas on the 8th, 9th and 10th floors where bins were piled high with cotton fabric, from which the workers made the blouses called “shirt waists”, and finished products filled every available spot.
Operations such as the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, owned by Isaac Harris and Max Blanck, most often worked with subcontractors who supplied the labor for their operations, for a percentage of the profits. These subcontractors were unregulated and paid the lowest salaries they could, thereby improving their own take. They also operated the day to day operation, and in the aftermath, company officials claimed they had no knowledge of how business was being conducted on their behalf. Among other dangers were the fact that most of the doors were locked – to prevent theft, and to prevent the organizers from the burgeoning labor unions from getting in. Additionally, the doors that were open, opened inward, rather than outward. The problem with this arrangement was to become blatantly clear. Whatever the reason, there was only one exit open for workers leaving the premises, where women’s purses were inspected as they left to guarantee against pilfering by the workers.
Conditions throughout the garment industry mirrored those at the Triangle company. In the years before 1911, the Women’s Trade Union League made attempts, via organization and protest, to garner better working conditions for garment industry workers. Following a strike in 1910 by the cloakmakers, changes began to be effected. But protest was still a dangerous move for any young garment worker, too, and both police and agents hired by the owners routinely sought out, attacked and beat protesting and agitating workers in an attempt to thwart them and forstall their efforts.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Company, despite being a non-union shop, still had a few employees who had joined Local 25, The Ladies’ Waist and Dress Maker’s Union, part of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. It was a start in the efforts to improve conditions, wages, and safety for workers. The ILGWU, and the Womens’ Trade Union League, would soon have a bitter cause with which to rally support.
No one ever determined what happened next. Possibly a male worker threw a cigarette or a lit match into the flammable refuse that littered the floor. But as the workers prepared to leave, came the terrifying scream of FIRE!
With a wealth of fuel at hand - rooms filled with cotton - the fire quickly spread. Male workers on the 8th floor tried to douse the flames with the 27 water buckets that were kept on hand, but in moments the fire raged out of control. Panicked workers ran for exits. There was a stairway at one end of the loft space on the 8th floor. But the doors opened inward and as a result of the crush of bodies jammed against it, no one could escape.
There were two passenger elevators. They were operated by two men who ultimately became heroes, responsible for saving dozens of lives. They arrived at the 8th floor but each elevator car held only 10 people. Making an estimated 20 trips apiece, they ferried passengers down to safety, the workers streaming into the street even as their clothing smoldered.
Upstairs, several men tried to help women get to safety through the windows next door by forming a human chain, but all of them fell the 80 feet to the ground.
An early arrival to the conflagration saw what he believed to be a bundle of rags being thrown into the street. Instead he discovered it was one of the first of the victims to leap from the building in a desperate attempt to evade the inferno that was soon sweeping throughout the three floors.
The fire escape buckled under the weight of the dozens fleeing and the courtyard it led too was soon blazing hot. Workers on the 9th floor were in dire straits. The east end stairway was blocked by fire. The door to the west side stairway was blocked. The elevators were run up and down in a desperate attempt to rescue as many people as they could, but the fire was moving faster than workers could cram into the tiny cars. In terror, the terrified men and women left behind flung themselves into the empty elevator shafts, crashing onto the roofs that soon began to leak blood onto the operators, Joe Zitto and Joe Gaspar. Others trapped upstairs on 8 finally managed to get a door open and raced to safety, though their clothes had been burned from their bodies. Through various means, most of the 8th and 10th floor workers managed to reach safety. Though when the alarm sounded on the 10th floor workers thought it was a joke, before smelling smoke. Most of them rushed to the roof, and nearly 120 evacuees from the 10th floor were aided to safety by NYU law school students from the next door building, who lowered a ladder upon which those workers clambered over. It would be on 9, however, where the loss of life was most grievous.
By now the huge crowd that had gathered in the street, more than a 1,000 spectators, watched in horror as men and women and girls leapt from windows and ledges to their deaths. Singly, in pairs, and as many as five at a time, holding hands, they plunged off. One couple kissed before diving to the street below. The force of the impact of several bodies was so fearsome that the bodies broke through the glassed vault lights and into the basement where they were soon floating in the runoff from the fire hoses.
Fire trucks from several companies arrived. Whether the trapped victims' hopes flared, no one will know. But they would be dashed. The spray from the hoses only reached the 7th floor. Arial ladders only reached the 6th and 7th floors. Firefighters tried to use blankets and nets to catch the people jumping, without success. Their work, and entrance into the building was hampered by the growing piles of bodies on the ground. The firemen who finally got into the building and up to the fire floors doused the flames but found no one left to save. By the time they got upstairs, all they found were the dead. The majority of those who perished came from the 9th floor. Rescuers found 19 bodies jammed, literally melted together, against one locked door there. There were 25 women dead in a cloak room and later 25 bodies were discovered piled on the roofs of the 2 elevators.
In less than 15 minutes, 146 workers died.
Harris and Blanck were subsequently acquitted by a jury of any culpability in the fire, particularly whether or not they knew the doors were locked on the premises. Twenty-three civil suits were later brought against the pair. Three years later the company's owners settled those suits. They paid the families $75.00 per dead worker.
Among the 146 were Kate Leone, Rosarea Maltese, and Sarah Sabasowitz, all aged 14. They were the youngest identified victims.
Three days after the fire, the following notice was placed in the industry trade papers:
“NOTICE, THE TRIANGLE WAIST CO. beg to notify their customers that they are in good working order. Headquarters now at 9-11 University Place.”
Upon a subsequent investigation a few weeks later by the Building Department of New York City it was discovered that the building at 9-11 was not fireproof. And access to one fire escape had already been blocked off by equipment.
