In 1911, a fire at what New York garment factory killed 146 workers?

In 1911, a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory killed 146 workers. The disaster began on March 25, 1911, in the factory’s rooms on the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors of New York’s Asch Building, now the Brown Building near Washington Square Park.

Most victims were young immigrant women, many of them Italian or Jewish, and the deaths resulted from flames, smoke inhalation, or falls and jumps from the upper floors. Locked or difficult-to-open doors, inadequate fire escapes, and ladders that could not reach the upper stories turned a workplace fire into a mass-casualty event.

The tragedy provoked public outrage and helped drive major reforms in New York’s building, fire-safety, workplace, and factory-inspection laws. A common mix-up is confusing the factory with the building: Triangle Shirtwaist was the company, while the fire occurred in the Asch Building. The structure still stands as an important memorial site.