Photo on 1st Avenue today by Steven
Today marks the 114th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.
As in the past 20-plus years, volunteers have participated in the chalking project (organized by Street Pictures), writing the names and ages of the victims, mostly young women, in front of the buildings where they lived on the Lower East Side.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which occurred on March 25, 1911, in New York City, remains one of the deadliest industrial disasters in U.S. history. The tragedy claimed the lives of 146 garment workers. Management locked the doors to the stairwells and exits to prevent unauthorized breaks. The trapped workers either perished in the flames or by jumping from the factory windows.
Located at the northwest corner of Greene Street and Washington Place, just east of Washington Square Park, the Triangle Waist Company became a symbol of the urgent need for workplace safety reforms.
For more details on the fire and its lasting impact, visit the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition website.
4 comments:
It is reassuring to see that this tribute continues each year, and that the lives of these women are still honored. Thank you to each person who takes chalk in hand to mark where the victims lived.
I feel that this remembrance powerfully connects those of us living here today with the strivers who came before us in this area. This is, in many ways, the story of the determination of living in NYC - a story that repeats over generations, and is familiar to us for that reason.
The first time I saw this was in either 2002 or 2003, on 54th St, just west of 1st Ave.
I think about the young lady who lived in my building often. Actually that building was torn down and a new one was built in its place in the 1930’s, but I cherish the memory of her here in this neighborhood.
People organized a very passionate memorial yesterday, where names of each girl were embroidered in a unique way and sewn together and then opened and displayed on the actual building near Washington Square. Very cool, saw it on Tumblr of all places.
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