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[Tim McCulloch]

... for the 146 humans, mostly young, female, and immigrants who died in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, setting a course for enhancements to life safety codes, firefighting in "high rise" buildings, and advancing the Labor Movement.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/new-triangle-shirtwaist-factory-fire-memorial-nyc_n_6526aaf1e4b09f4b8d428e46

[Dan Mortensen]

Thanks for posting that, Tim.

As a very amateur historical buff about New York City with a focus on Manhattan, that is a fascinating and horrifying story, how they were locked in each day to work and died because of a padlock. I went on some Greenwich Village tours from the Municipal Art Society, and seeing that building there and realizing that it's the exact same building repaired after the fire...

It's not a nice feeling.

All those people were just as dead as those who jumped from the WTC on 9/11, they just didn't have to think about it for so long.

Both horrifying.

On one of my trips to NYC, must have been around the anniversary of the fire, there were two doorways a block or two apart in the Village that had chalk writings on the sidewalk saying that "(a named woman) lived here and died on 3/25/1911 in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire." I walked around looking for more but couldn't find any.

That really brought home that they were normal local people.

We'll be sure to visit this memorial when we go next, but not this month, sadly. I have a book in my queue about the disaster, but it hasn't seemed like a fun read. It's moved higher in my list now.

[Tim McCulloch]

Hi Dan-

Every year I read another book about the labor movement or something associated with it (workplace health and safety, for ex.) as a way of celebrating Labor Day.  For 2023 the book is Triangle: The Fire That Changed America, by David von Drehle.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/080214151X

Ticks all the boxes, but importantly puts names and stories of individuals into the larger story of the fire and eventual outcomes of the lessons learned.  For such an influential (and at such great personal cost) disaster I was surprised to learn there had been no memorial, and now am pleased to see they will not be forgotten.

Codes and regulations are written in the blood of victims, with the great hope that those mistakes will not be repeated.

[Mac Kerr]

Back in the early '70s I had classes in that building.

Mac

[Tim McCulloch]

Back in the early '70s I had classes in that building.

Mac

Yeah, I think the building is owned by NYU (?)

[Mac Kerr]

Yeah, I think the building is owned by NYU (?)

Yes. It is called "Brown Building" at NYU. It was a long time ago, but I think I had Film history classes there.

Mac

[Dan Mortensen]

The book that's waiting to be read is "Flesh and Blood So Cheap", by Albert Marrin. It's one of the sideways-format books, and not very thick, but it's got a sticker on it that it was a National Book Award finalist.

Flesh and Blood So Cheap

Oh, it's a young readers book. Maybe that's best. Good reviews, though. Published on the disaster's centennial.

[Dan Mortensen]

Reviving Tim's thread on the 113th Anniversary of the tragedy:

I was in NYC in January and wanted to revisit the site and see the new memorial. Did that, but got there in the night and took pics but didn't spend time on it, as I thought the wife (who was not feeling well that day) and I would get back to see more, as the subject is interesting to both of us. Turns out we both tested positive for Covid the next day, which killed the rest of the sightseeing. We recovered enough to safely fly home without being contagious, and wore masks anyway.

The memorial does not look as good as in the pictures at the Huffington Post that Tim linked to. At least at night, the reflected names in the black granite were not really visible, and I could not see a sign of the vertical ribbon showing the height. Still, it was sobering to stand on that sidewalk and know what happened there, and how it motivated much societal change, although perhaps not enough.

Here is a picture that I took March 26, 2017, of the sidewalk chalked name and residence of someone who died in the fire, who was quite a bit older than many of the victims.

We had stayed on Thompson Street on a previous trip, and that's why we walked there to see the memorial for that woman. It was jarring to see this, which was the purpose of the people doing it. There was a picture of a different name in the book I cited and read.

RIP

[Tim McCulloch]

I am working back stage, reading your follow up after finishing Triangle during the rehearsal today.

The appalling thing is how little the exploitation of labor, especially for workers at the most vulnerable points in life, has changed. And society still looks the other way because many of them are not exactly "like us."

[ProSoundWeb Community]