For Those Killed in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911
By Amanda Burkett
I learned about the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in grade school. It was a day where 146 garment workers died due to being locked inside their overcrowded workplace when a fire broke out. The workers attempted to create human chains down the side of the building, jumped to their death from the six story windows, or attempted to escape down the elevator shaft. The story is a known tragedy of the industrial era. It was a period without labor laws, garment workers worked tirelessly for 12-hours per day, five days a week, and seven hours on Saturday, for the modern equivalent of four dollars an hour. From grade school, I knew that this the dark piece of history that it took to reform the labor industry (at least for documented people in the United States.) What I never learned, was that garment industry workers were almost all women. I never learned that the majority of these women were immigrants from Lithuania, Austria, Italy, Germany, Hungary, Jamaica and Romania. I never learned that almost all of them were in their teens or 20’s — as young as 14 years old. In this monument I will honor the women whose lives and context were condensed to a number of fatalities.
Young women and girls at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory.
In November of 1909, the people working in this factory and the women of the garment industry, organized the first large-scale women’s protest in U.S. history. Known as The Uprising of 20,000, 20,000 women striked for better safety, working conditions, and wages. A notable leader of the uprising was Clara Lemlich Shavelson. She spoke to the crowds outside of Cooper Union, after being arrested 17 times that day and brutally beaten by police officers at only 23 years old. According to the New York Times, the strike ceased once almost all factories adopted higher pay for their workers as well as a 52-hour week. Additionally they agreed to acknowledge International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) in the workplace. The strike and its leaders proved that women could host protests of large groups to achieve their needs, even within a movement dominated by men. This protest is seen by many as the origin of grassroots techniques and an influence on women’s marches of the future, protests for women suffrage (another movement in which Lemlich Shavelson was a leader) and civil rights marches of the future.
The city of New York and New York University have little to memorialize this piece of our history. On the side of the Brown Building is a small bronze plaque that reads:
“THE BROWN BUILDING. THIS TEN-STORY NEO-RENAISSANCE LOFT BUILDING, DESIGNED BY NEW YORK ARCHITECT JOHN WOOLLEY WAS BUILT IN 1900-01 FOR JOSEPH J. ASCH. THE TRIANGLE SHIRTWAIST FACTORY OCCUPIED THE BUILDINGS TOP THREE FLOORS. IN 1901, TRIANGLE EMPLOYEES INITIATED THE FIRST LARGE-SCALE STRIKE OF WOMEN WORKERS IN THE COUNTRY, BUT WORKERS’ DEMANDS FOR INCREASED FIRE SAFETY WERE NOT MET. ON MARCH 25TH 1911, A FIRE SWEPT THROUGH THE FACTORY, CLAIMING THE LIVES OF 146 GARMENT WORKERS. PROMPTED BY THE OUTRAGE OF REFORMERS AND LABOR UNIONS, NOTABLE THE ILGWU, NEW YORK STATE ENACTED. LEGISLATION TO SAFEGUARD THE HEALTH AND SAFETY OF WORKERS. THESE LAWS SUBSEQUENTLY SERVED AS MODELS FOR NATIONAL LABOR AND SAFETY REFORMS. THE BUILDING FACADE WAS LARGELY UNDAMAGED BY THE FIRE. IN 1929 FREDERICK BROWN DONATED THE BUILDING TO NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, WHICH NAMED IT IN HIS HONOR, AND HAS USED IT EVER SINCE AS AN ACADEMIC BUILDING. NEW YORK LANDMARKS PRESERVATION FOUNDATION 2003”
Although the plaque makes small acknowledgements of women and the ILGWU, (although not taking the space to define what that stood for, must be less important than the names of the male architect, male patron, and later male donor,) it does not due the victims justice, or the women who gathered to make history.
Context is the central focus of this monument. I wanted to highlight this because I’ve learned that monuments are easy to ignore. Considering what we’ve learned about representation of women, of minorities, of artistic styles — it is difficult to feel like existing monuments were made for you. I started with the question of, what did 1911 look like? The Asche Building, where the fire happened is now an NYU building (currently named the Brown Building,) was the area surrounding it associated with NYU at the time? Were women enrolled in higher education at this time? These questions may seem obvious to a historian or any person more educated on the period than I am, but I have no interest in appearing smart or making assumptions. Asking these questions was essential to my process. My grade school knowledge reemerged when through word of mouth, I learned that the building I had been having class in for almost a semester, was the same one where the fire occurred over 100 years ago. And in further research I learned that female students, the same age as I am right now, were enrolled next-door when the fire broke out. Women the same age as me, the same age as those working in the factory, likely wearing the garments that 146 people died while making.
The monument would acknowledge the context of the women who perished as well as attempt to make clear what life as a women in 1911 looked like. Visually my inspiration was a photo I found in the Barnard College archive as well as an image of the aforementioned Lemlich Shavelson (see below.)
Women at Barnard College in 1911.
The image depicts 10 female students gathered, appearing joyful only eight miles from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. (I searched for images of NYU students that studied next door, but found none.) The monument would look similar to this image. With three female students, cast in bronze, dressed in garments of the time appearing lively, with their school books, neckties, and shirtwaist dresses. One of the three women will have the likeness of Lemlich Shavelson (who was known in the papers to her annoyance for being a beautiful wisp-of-a girl,) and the accompanying plaque will honor her as well. This is not to pretend a tragedy did not occur, but to invite modern students to learn about the duality of women’s history surrounding their campus in 1911. My intention is to make the period not feel so far away, it was not a period of chaos where 146 people could be killed and it was just a sacrifice of the industrial era — this was a preventable tragedy that effected people as much then as it would if it happened now. This was a period, like all periods, where citizens felt that their life was modern. Women were living lives different from their own mothers, they were protesting, they were receiving higher education, they had dreams and laughs together.
The monument would be placed on the steps of the fountain in Washington Square Park, a spot where many NYU students gather and make memories year round. The monument is being proposed to New York University, because of their poor attempt to acknowledge this history in the past, and that the statues will be something for their students to connect to. This way the work that these women did will never be forgotten or taken for granted