NEW YORK — If people really looked for history in the New York City building where the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory once stood, they might find it. Plaques mark it as the site of a terrible fire in 1911 that became a catalyst in the American labor movement’s fight to protect workplace safety.
But for some, a few words on a wall aren’t enough to honor the fire’s 146 victims.
So, after years of effort, the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition is dedicating Wednesday a new memorial that has no chance of being overlooked.
From one corner of the building, a giant steel ribbon with the names of those who died in the disaster, mostly women and girls, has been installed horizontally. Below, a reflective panel displays stenciled names, as well as quotes from people who were there, describing the chaos.
In the coming weeks, a vertical steel column will be added to the corner to span almost the entire height of the building, a reference to the height at which the victims were trapped.
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 that way. Some jumped to their deaths from windows to avoid the flames.
“What you will see is a monument that attempts to incorporate into the object itself the history of the fire, a history of working women, a history of Italians and Jews, a history of tragedy, but also a history of change,” Mary said. Anne Trasciatti, professor at Hofstra University and president of the coalition.
The victims were near the end of their work day on March 25, 1911, when a fire started on the eighth floor of the clothing factory, which occupied the top floors of a building now owned by New York University.
Frantic workers tried to get out as flames spread to the ninth and 10th floors, some struggling to get into an elevator, others heading for the roof. But others who tried to get through a door to escape found it locked, trapping them inside. In a subsequent trial of the factory owners, some said the door had been kept locked on purpose, for fear of theft.
Firefighters responded quickly. But its stairs were too short to reach the upper floors.
Horrified witnesses in the crowd watched as workers jumped out of windows. Among those spectators was the late Frances Perkins, already an anti-poverty advocate trying to change working conditions, and she became even more dedicated after what she saw that day.
“This really pushed her to push for ‘we have to treat workers better,’” said Ileen DeVault, a professor of labor history at Cornell University.
Some of his words remembering the day are part of the memorial and run across the reflective panel. “All of them were killed, everyone who jumped was killed.”
Perkins would be part of a state commission that implemented a series of safety rules in New York that were emulated elsewhere, and later became an integral part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s cabinet as his Secretary of Labor. He pushed policies such as minimum wage, workers’ compensation and old-age pensions.
One of the names on the memorial will be that of Rosie Weiner, who died in the fire, but whose sister and fellow factory worker, Katie Weiner, made it out alive.
Weiner would later recount how he grabbed onto an elevator cable to escape. Today, his great-niece, Suzanne Pred Bass, is on the board of directors of Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition.
Growing up, Bass learned that his great-aunt had survived the fire, but it wasn’t until years later that he heard about Rosie.
Bass’s mother recalled accompanying her mother when she was little to the dock where the victims’ bodies were taken after the fire.
“She never forgot that, she was 4 years old and I can only imagine how scary and horrible it is,” Bass said.
The monument’s designers Richard Joon Yoo and Uri Wegman wanted to find a way for people today to connect with the fire and its legacy, they said. A few years ago the public was invited to contribute pieces of fabric that were tied together into a 300-foot (91-meter) “Collective Ribbon.” The design of that ribbon was etched into the commemorative steel that rises toward the top of the building.
It was important to make that connection between the past and the present because labor issues, workplace protections and the way workers are treated are still far from being resolved in the country and the world, Yoo and Wegman said.
“All the talk about female workers, immigration, work, are these touchpoints that keep breaking out over and over again,” Yoo said, noting that industrial disasters, in garment factories and elsewhere, still they occur all over the world. the world.
The two came up with the design for the monument about a decade ago. It is coming to fruition, with a capital budget of around $3 million, during a year of labor activism in some American industries, with strikes by auto workers, hospital staff, film and television writers and film actors.
It just goes to show that the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire still has lessons to teach, Bass said.
“We forget a tragedy like this at our own peril,” he said. “We have the same problems, immigrant problems, safe working conditions problems, problems of abuse of women in the workplace. “It’s not like any of these problems are solved.”
2023-10-11 14:10:16
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