The victims and legacy of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire are being remembered with a new memorial
October 10, 2023 at 9:13 pm PDTFine artist Cushla Naegele visits the Triangle Shirtwaist Memorial, a day before its official ceremonial opening, Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2023, in New York. The memorial features the engraved names of 146 people, mostly immigrant girls and women, who were killed in a 1911 clothing factory fire.
It’s the story of desperate immigrant women, mostly Jewish and Italian, who were trapped by a door that was locked because there were no workplace safety rules that said it couldn’t be. Some jumped to their deaths from the windows to avoid the flames. Frantic workers tried to get out as the flames spread to the ninth and 10th floors, some scrambling to get into an elevator, others heading for the roof. But others who tried to get past a door to escape found it locked, trapping them inside. At a trial of the factory’s owners afterward, some said the door had been kept locked on purpose, over theft concerns.Horrified witnesses in the crowd watched as workers leapt from the windows.
Perkins would be part of a state commission that put a series of safety rules in place in New York that were emulated elsewhere, and later became an integral part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s cabinet as his secretary of labor. She pushed for policies like minimum wage, workers compensation, and old age pensions.
Growing up, Bass knew her great-aunt had lived through the fire, but it wasn’t until years later that she heard about Rosie. Memorial designers Richard Joon Yoo and Uri Wegman wanted to find a way for modern-day people to connect with the fire and its legacy, they said. The public was invited a few years ago to contribute pieces of fabric that were joined together in a 300-foot “Collective Ribbon." That ribbon’s design was then etched onto the memorial steel that rises up toward the top of the building.
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