Triangle in Washington Square

(This was written Thursday, April 17, 2008)

It was an ineffably beautiful day in New York City last Thursday. I’d come in from suburban New Jersey to conduct some research in a library devoted to Jewish culture and history, located in the East Village. I finished my work there by 2pm and walked a few blocks to Washington Square Park; I just read a book about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, and learned that the building which housed Triangle still stands, though it’s been renamed and now contains classrooms and offices for NYU.

For those who don’t know of it: the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, March 25, 1911, was the greatest single workplace loss of life in a New York City...until September 11, 2001. Crammed into lofts filled with extremely flammable cloth and other materials, seamstresses, cutters and other workers toiled 12-15 hours a day six or seven days a week in the swiftly growing NYC garment industry. Conditions were bad, but they were worse elsewhere, and people were glad to have a job at Triangle.

No one knows how the fire started, but the minute-by-minute account makes it clear that after 60 to 90 seconds, anyone still in the building was doomed to death by smoke or by fire. Actually, some people chose a third option: jumping to certain (if not always immediate or merciful) death from the ninth and tenth story windows.

146 (mostly) women and men died; hundreds of people lined up for days to view the burnt and crushed corpses, to claim a sister or mother or child. In many cases the face was unidentifiable; only a lock of hair, a scrap of lace, a certain shoe brand, could give the victim a name. The tragedy sparked a near-revolt in the immigrant quarters of the city, leading to large-scale changes in workplace safety, treatment of immigrants, and the balance of political power in New York. The factory’s owners were acquitted of wrongdoing.

It was eerie to stand beneath the building at the northwest corner of Greene Street and Washington Place – it had become so iconic in my mind. It was like standing next to the Titanic. I looked around me and tried to imagine what it was like that March day almost 100 years ago: bodies sprawled on the pavement; firemen shouting – knowing that their firehoses couldn’t reach the fire on the ninth floor, running into the blazing building that others were running and jumping from; the slick streets covered with water, reflecting the blaze luridly in the setting sun; people on the ground shouting to those at the windows not to jump, that help was coming! It came too late.

Thursday must’ve been a visiting day for incoming or prospective NYU students, because the narrow streets were packed with smiling young people and their parents. Many had name tags stuck to their shirts. I stepped around them and past them to take pictures; they didn’t seem to notice the dead, mangled women at their feet.