Fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company Quiz

Answer: 1901

The Asch Building at the corner of Greene Street and Washington Square was planned in July of 1900. The building was completed in January of 1901. In June of 1902, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was opened on the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors. The building was owned by Joseph Asch, and Triangle was owned by Isaac Harris and Max Blanck.

Answer: True

In 1909, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company was sent a letter by the local fire prevention agency, suggesting the company meet to discuss ways to improve fire safety in the factory. The letter was ignored. In October of 1910, about six months before the fire, Triangle did pass a fire safety inspection.

The inspection official noted that there were 259 buckets for water in the Asch Building, and there was a 5,000 gallon water tank on the roof, with a connecting hose on each floor. The inpector didn't admit until later that the hoses were disintegrated and practically useless.

Answer: Italy

Sweatshops in urban areas provided many jobs for women. The majority of people employed by the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory were young female immigrants from Italy. There was also a number of Jewish women who worked there. Most of the 500 workers at Triangle were between the ages of 16 and 30, with a few as old as their late forties. The factory also employed a few men.

Answer: Around closing time

The fire started on Saturday, March 25, 1911, around 4:40 PM, right at the end of the day's shift. The fire started in an accumulation of two months' worth of rags and materials. The fire started on the eighth floor, but quickly spread to the ninth and tenth floors. Most of the workers from the eighth and tenth floors escaped, but many of the ninth floor workers were trapped. Locked escape routes, a poorly built fire escape, and a slow, crowded elevator contributed to the losses.

Answer: The water-logged elevator shaft

New York Fire Department Company 72 arrived at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory about six minutes after the fire started. Some of the men who worked at the factory tried to throw buckets of water on the fire, but to no avail. When the firefighters arrived, they met a very gruesome scene.

The sidewalk around the building was lined with bodies of workers, some who had fallen from the faulty fire escape (which came away from the building under the weight), and many who had jumped from the ninth floor windows.

Some workers chose to die from the fall than burn to death. The fire was under control and out by 5:15 PM. After the fire was out, crowds of grieving family members and curious onlookers gathered around the Asch Building. By 8 PM that night, 60 bodies had been found in the upper floors.

In total, the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory claimed the lives of 146 workers. Around 8:15 PM, the last survivor, a man named Herman Meshel, was found in a flooded elevator shaft. The entire basement was water-logged, and Meshel had stayed in the water to avoid the fire.

The search for bodies and survivors continued until 11:30 PM.

Answer: Their brother

After the bodies were pulled from the wreckage and collected from the sidewalk, they were sent by wagon to a temporary morgue at the East 26th Street pier. Late on Saturday and into Sunday, an estimated 50,000 people passed by the Asch Building. The authorities let family members and the curious (!) into the morgue, some people fainted from the gruesome sight.

A few family members even ran to the edge of the pier to jump in the water, but the police stopped them. Due to potential theft and pickpocketing, police eventually ordered the people not related to the victims to leave.

Some of the victims were identified by jewelry, clothes, and their names on the paychecks in their pockets. Many of the bodies had been burned beyond recognition, and it took nearly two weeks to identify some of the victims.

Although there were several families that lost more than one member, the case of the Maltese family was particularly heartbreaking. Right after the fire, the brother, Serafino, identified his two sisters, 14 and 20 years old.

His mother was one of the original seven unidentified bodies. It wasn't until December of 1911 that her husband identified her body. He recalled that an object in a collection of victims' belongins at the police station belonged to her. In the end, only six remained unidentified.

Answer: International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and Women's Trade League Union

Just two years before the fire, workers at Triangle had gone on strike, demanding safer working conditions, including unlocked escape doors and stronger fire escapes. Some of the strikers marched to the New York headquarters of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, but the union didn't have enough money to help them. During the strike, many workers did join the ILGWU.

The strike ended with the factory agreeing to a 54-hour workweek, providing workers with needles and thread (instead of the workers paying for them), and somewhat higher wages.

The strike mainly drew public attention to the dangers the workers faced. On April 5, 1911, 120,000 people attended a city-wide memorial service for the victims, led by ILGWU and the Women's Trade League Union.

The march was led by union activist Rose Schneiderman, Mary Dreier and Helen Marot (from the WTLU) and numerous others from both unions.

Answer: No

Just a few days after the fire, the owners of the Triangle factory, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, reopened in another building and ran a newspaper ad that they were hiring new workers. Immediately, the Building Department investigated the new factory and found many violations of safety regulations.

The new building was much like the old one in terms of safety. Blanck and Harris was indicted for manslaughter on April 11, 1911. According to state codes, all factory doors had to be unlocked, and locked doors were a misdemeanor.

But if a worker died due to a locked door, it was a felony. To be convicted, the court had to prove that the doors were locked and the owners knew it, and someone had died behind a locked door. Prosecutors mainly focused on one woman who was found in a storage room of 20 bodies.

There were no laws against flammable material lying around the factory. Workers' compensation did not exist, and it was rare that a family ever won anything from the employer if someone died on the job. During the trial, the owners' lawyer claimed that it was necessary to lock all but one door so employees could be searched for stolen materials on the way out.

The jury could not prove that Harris and Blanck knew the doors were locked. They were acquitted of manslaughter charges on December 28, 1911. Finally in 1914, after several other claims were brought against Triangle for different violations, 23 families of the fire victims were awarded $75 per life. Even at that time, it was not much.

Answer: It is used by New York University.

The Asch Building never made much news again after the settlements. In 1929, it was purchased by New York University and currently houses some of their departments. There is a memorial plaque on the outside of the building, commemorating the victims. The Asch Building was designated as a national historic landmark.

In 2002, the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Factory Memorial was founded. Every year the non-profit organtization holds a fundraising dinner in New York City to raise money for scholarships for children of injured workers.

At the first three dinners, they raised enough money for about 40 scholarships, valued at $2,000 each.

Answer: 107

Rose Freedman, the last known survivor of the Triangle fire, died on February 22, 2001 at the age of 107. Just two years earlier another survivor, named Bessie Cohn also died at age 107.