Qualla: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire: 146 Lives and the Birth of Workplace Safety

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire: 146 Lives and the Birth of Workplace Safety: Introduction

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Massimiliano Vintaloro, CC BY-SA 4.0. The doors were locked. That was the fact that turned a Saturday afternoon fire into the deadliest industrial disaster in New York City's history and one of the deadliest in the nation's. At approximately 4:40 p.m. on March 25, 1911, a fire broke out in a scrap bin on the eighth floor of the Asch Building at the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place, just east of Washington Square Park. The Triangle Waist Company occupied the top three floors. Within minutes, 146 garment workers were dead -- 123 women and girls and 23 men -- killed by flames, smoke, or the fall from windows eight and nine stories above the sidewalk. Most were recent Italian or Jewish immigrants. The youngest were fourteen years old.

Image: Massimiliano Vintaloro | CC BY-SA 4.0

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire: 146 Lives and the Birth of Workplace Safety: Fifty-Two Hours for Seven Dollars

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AlanEisen, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Triangle Waist Company, owned by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, produced women's blouses known as shirtwaists. The factory employed about 500 workers, mostly young immigrant women and girls who worked nine hours a day on weekdays and seven on Saturdays, earning between seven an...

Image: AlanEisen | CC BY-SA 4.0

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire: 146 Lives and the Birth of Workplace Safety: Eighteen Minutes of Fire

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit National Archives and Records Administration. Office of Presidential Libraries. Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. (4/1/1985 - 7/31/2011), Public domain. The fire started in a scrap bin under a cutter's table on the eighth floor. Within three minutes, the Greene Street stairway was unusable in both directions. The foreman who held the key to the locked stairway door had already escaped by another route. Workers on the eighth floor...

Image: National Archives and Records Administration. Office of Presidential Libraries. Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. (4/1/1985 - 7/31/2011) | Public domain

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire: 146 Lives and the Birth of Workplace Safety: Seventy-Five Dollars Per Life

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sevtibidou, CC BY-SA 3.0. Blanck and Harris survived by fleeing to the roof. They were indicted on first- and second-degree manslaughter charges. At trial, their attorney Max Steuer systematically undermined survivor testimony by having witnesses repeat their accounts until the jury suspected coached stat...

Image: Sevtibidou | CC BY-SA 3.0

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire: 146 Lives and the Birth of Workplace Safety: Thirty-Eight New Laws

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shannon McGee from Huntsville, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0. The fire galvanized reform with a speed that the labor movement had struggled to achieve for decades. Frances Perkins, who witnessed the disaster from the street, formed a Committee on Public Safety and began lobbying for new legislation. She would go on to become the first femal...

Image: Shannon McGee from Huntsville, USA | CC BY-SA 2.0

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire: 146 Lives and the Birth of Workplace Safety: Steel Ribbons on Washington Place

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eejjmm8888, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Asch Building still stands at 23-29 Washington Place, now called the Brown Building and part of the New York University campus. It is both a National Historic Landmark and a New York City landmark. For years, the only formal commemoration was a set of plaques on the building'...

Image: Eejjmm8888 | CC BY-SA 4.0