Triangle Shirtwaist-fabriken (Brown Building)

New York · USA · House

On 25 March 1911 a fire broke out on the top three floors of what was then called the Asch Building. Inside worked garment workers, for the most part young immigrant women from Italy and from Eastern European Jewish families, many between fourteen and twenty-three years old. The fire spread within minutes, and the emergency exits were locked. 146 people died, at least 62 of them by jumping from the eighth and ninth floors down onto the street as passers-by watched. The disaster became a turning point for American labour law.

Today New York University owns the building and teaches biology and chemistry in the same rooms. Since the 1980s students and teachers have described the same things: a smell of smoke on the upper floors with no source, the sound of running feet in empty corridors, silhouettes in the windows seen from the street. Stop on the pavement and look up. It was from here they jumped, on a March day more than a hundred years ago.

FAQ

Hvor ligger Triangle Shirtwaist-fabriken (Brown Building)?

Triangle Shirtwaist-fabriken (Brown Building) ligger i New York, USA.

Opplysningene bygger på lokal folketro og vitneskildringer.

Image: Epicgenius · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons