On March 25, 1911, 146 garment workers perished in the devastating Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in Greenwich Village. Ignited by a cigarette butt, the fire engulfed the factory where mostly young immigrant women worked nine to 16-hour days, six days a week, creating blouses known as shirtwaists for below minimum wage.
Now, a permanent memorial in remembrance of the workplace tragedy has been installed at the site of the historic disaster. Today, October 11, over 500 people gathered at the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place for the unveiling of the new memorial to remember the horrific fire that took the lives of the garment workers 112 years ago, and to commemorate the event’s enduring influence on the labor movement.
Designed by Uri Wegman and Richard Joon Yoo, the memorial consists of an engraved steel band that envelopes the corners of what is now New York University’s Brown Building. The names and ages of the 146 victims are cut into the steel ribbon and reflected down onto street-level darkened paneling, where visitors can also read about the story of the fire in English, Yiddish, and Italian, the languages spoken by the victims. Funded by a $1.5 million grant from the state, the memorial is slated to be completed by the beginning of 2024, which will extend the steel ribbon so it scales the height of the building up to the ninth floor.
The design was chosen out of nearly 180 proposals submitted in an international competition held by Remember the...
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