Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Memorial Unveiled In West Village

GREENWICH VILLAGE, NY — In 1911, 142 workers, mostly young, immigrant workers tragically died when a fire broke out as they worked inside the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory located on Washington Place and Green Street.

On Wednesday, officials, labor leaders and relatives of the victims finally unveiled a memorial to those who died.

Many of the mostly Italian and Jewish workers perished as they tried in vain to open a door locked from the outside to prevent theft. Fire truck ladders could not reach them on the ninth floor, and a crowd of hundreds on the ground watched in horror as bodies rained down from above, desperate to escape the flames.

The moment is said to have started the modern labor movement, as the workers had previously tried to strike for better and safer working conditions just a year earlier.

And 112 years later, at the ceremony on Wednesday, speakers highlighted how that past tragedy speaks to today, including Governor Kathy Hochul and the acting U.S.labor secretary.

Hochul called New York “the birthplace of the workers’ rights movement because of what happened right on this block."

"These were little girls," she said, referring to the very young ages of the women who died. Three victims were only 14-years-old.

"We can imagine the black plume of smoke up in the air, the flames that spread from floor to floor," Julie Su, the acting labor secretary, said, describing the scene 112 years ago, "the panic of the workers who ran and found closed exits and broken fire escapes, their cries for help and then the thud of bodies as they began to jump one after another.”

Many speakers, including Hochul and Su, citied Francis Perkins, who was among the hundreds of horrified onlookers watching the young workers plummet to the street as the flames quickly consumed the factory in under 20 minutes.

Perkins would go on to become the first woman to be named U.S. labor secretary

"The terrifying images of that day changed the course of Francis' life," Su said. "Francis turned the horror of what she saw here and the voices of those immigrant women who were silenced on March 25, 1911 into a call to action," citing her work on safety standards for factory workers, unemployment insurance, social security, the minimum wage and restrictions on child labor.

Other speakers referred to current labor efforts, as well as the efforts to roll back the protections past labor crusaders, like Perkins, fought for.

“Tragically, many of these protections are being eroded by unscrupulous employers as greed continues to endanger workers,” said Lynne Fox the president of Workers United, the group behind the current efforts to organize Starbucks coffee shops around the country.

The memorial was part of a decade-long effort by a non-profit, Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition — a group of labor advocates and relatives of the fire victims.

“It is gratifying for all the family members of those who died in this tragic fire to know that through the memorial," said Suzanne Pred Bass, who lost a great aunt in the fire, "this and future generations will learn about the fire and its significance in labor history.”