Demonstration of protest and mourning for Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of March 25, 1911, By an unknown photographer, New York City, New York, April 5, 1911; General Records of the Department of Labor; Record Group 174; National Archives.
On March 25, 1911, fire swept through the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City, killing 146 employees, most of them women.
This photo was part of the exhibit The Way We Worked, on display at the National Archives in Washington DC in 2006.
This image (or other media file) is in the public domain because its copyright has expired. This applies to the United States, where Works published prior to 1978 were copyright protected for a maximum of 75 years. See Circular 1 "COPYRIGHT BASICS" PDF. Works published before 1923, in this case 1911, are now in the public domain.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Building, a National Historic Landmark, is located at 23-29 Washington Place in New York City, NY. The property is now used as classrooms and offices by New York University and is not open to the public.
 | The Asch building--known as the Brown building today--was the home of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory and site of both the first large scale strike of women workers in the country and of one of the worst industrial disasters in American history. Hazardous working conditions were the rule in early 20th-century American industry, and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was no exception. When fire swept through the building in the spring of 1911, locked doors and missing fire escapes contributed to the deaths of 146 workers, most of them young women. Many leapt to their deaths in a vain effort to avoid the flames. |
1 comment:
The Triangle factory actually wasn’t a lock-in. But in those days there were no restrictions on egress routes, and the doors opened inwards, instead of outwards. What this meant was that in a panic situation, a scrum of people rushed to the exit door, and found they couldn’t open it because of the pressure from the people stacked up behind them, pressing everyone forward against the door. This is one of the effects that most people find rather far fetched, until they see the evidence of piles of suffocated people piled up against a door, after a fire has been put out.
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