1. Hand sewing is done by men and women facing a narrow bench, while men operate sewing machines at a long row of paired work stations. Some unethical subcontractors took advantage of newly-arrived immigrants forcing them to work long hours for the right to keep their job. A standard 56-hour week might stretch to 70 hours without overtime pay. Photographer: Lewis Hine, ca Kheel Center image identifier: 5783pb1f3c Image 18 of 28
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2. Four women strikers wear signs that say “Picket, Ladies Tailors Strikers” as they march in the cold streets. The smallest garment shops could not withstand the idle period and negotiated concessions with the union during the first two weeks of the strike. Larger shop owners formed the Association of Waist and Dress Manufacturers of New York, countered claims of poor working conditions and low wages, resolved to operate open shops, and signed “no surrender” agreements. Photographer: unknown, February 2, 1910

3. Fire fighters from Ladder Company 20 arrived at the Triangle Waist Company minutes after the alarm was sounded and sprayed water at the burning Asch Building hoping that the dampening mist, too weak to put out the fire by the time it reached the top floors, would cool the panicked workers who had been forced to window ledges by extreme heat, smoke, flames and blocked exits. Photographer: Brown Brothers, March 25, Kheel Center image identifier: 5780pb39f20aa Image 4 of 20
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4. Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, owners of the large Triangle Shirtwaist factory were known as the "Shirtwaist Kings." They immigrated to the United States from Russia and had made a fortune manufacturing "Gibson girl" style blouses. To secure their profits when margins were slim, they successfully fended off the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union's attempts to organize their factory during the shirtwaist strike of Photographer: unknown, ca Kheel Center image identifier: 5780pbx39ff19 Image 1 of 20
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5. At the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place, onlookers saw fire fighters struggling to save workers and control the blaze. The tallest fire truck ladders reached only to the sixth floor, 30 feet below most of those standing on window ledges waiting desperately for rescue. Men and women, escaping the fire in the only way they thought possible, jumped from the windows to their deaths while people in the street below pleaded with them to wait for help. Photographer: unknown, March 25, Kheel Center image identifier: 5780pb39f17a Image 9 of 20

6. Doctors examining each body on the sidewalk and street for signs of life located only a few survivors. Officers gathered personal items for safe keeping and to help identify the victim, including money, pay envelopes, papers, and jewelry, then placed numbered tags on victims before taking them to the 26th Street pier temporary morgue. Photographer: unknown, March 25, 1911

7. An officer stands at the Asch Building’s 9th floor window after the Triangle fire. Sewing machines, drive shafts, and other wreckage of the Triangle factory fire are piled in the center of the blaze-scoured room. Photographer: Brown Brothers, 1911

8. A police officer and others with the broken bodies of Triangle fire victims at their feet, look up in shock at workers poised to jump from the upper floors of the burning Asch Building. The anguish and gruesome deaths of workers was witnessed firsthand by many people living or walking near the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place. Others read about it in the many newspaper reports circulated during the following days and weeks, bringing the conditions of garment worker into public scrutiny as it had been during the shirtwaist strike of Photographer: Brown Brothers, March 25, 1911

9. The flimsy fire escape ladder descended close to the building forcing those fleeing to struggle through flames and past warped iron window shutters stuck open across their path. Sections of ladder which ended two stories above the ground, twisted and collapsed under the weight of workers trying to escape the fire killing many who had chosen it as their lifeline. Photographer: unknown, 1911

10. “Triangle Shirt Waist Manufacturers Listening To Testimony Against Them." Max Blanck and Isaac Harris. Photographer: Artist unknown, 1911

11. “Inspector Of Buildings. Record fire for New York, 145 lives lost
“Inspector Of Buildings! Record fire for New York, 145 lives lost!!!! Building Fire Proof, Only Fire Escape Collapses. O.K. Inspector.” An editorial cartoon shows a skeletal building inspector with a grim smile approving conditions at the Asch Building. Photographer: Artist Robert Carter, 1911

12. In an editorial cartoon, a man wearing clothing made of money leans against the factory door which is locked with a dollar sign key, while women die in smoke and flames on the other side of the door. Photographer: Artist name illegible, 1911

13. “This Is One of a Hundred Murdered. Is any one to be punished for this
“This Is One of a Hundred Murdered. Is any one to be punished for this?” The editorial cartoon shows a woman’s body on the sidewalk surrounded by smoldering fragments with a sign nearby that reads “Operators Wanted. Inquire Ninth Floor.” Photographer: Artist TAD [Thomas Aloysius Dorgan], Kheel Center image identifier: 5780pb39f18b Image 5 of 14

14. In an editorial cartoon, a skeleton surrounded by smoke and flames rises from the burning Asch Building and considers the horrifying events below. Photographer: Artist unknown, Kheel Center image identifier: 5780pb39f18i Image 6 of 14

15. “Who is responsible? Who is responsible for the murders of one hundred and forty-five young girls and men in the “fire proof” fire trap? On whose head rests the blame for the inadequate, antiquated, criminal stairs and single fire escape, made possible because the building was classed as “fireproof”? These dead girls cry aloud, not for revenge, but for justice. Their flame-racked bodies demand protection for the thousands of sister toilers who have not yet been sacrificed to fire. Their silent lips call, ‘Who is responsible?’” Detail of March 28, 1911 New York Evening Journal editorial cartoon. Photographer: Artist TAD [Thomas Aloysius Dorgan], March 28, Kheel Center image identifier: pb1f7b Image 2 of 14

16. The people began to throw themselves out of the windows
The people began to throw themselves out of the windows. All the machines were bubbling with flames. I had my fur coat and hat with two feathers and a green woolen skirt which I pulled over my hat and my head. I know I ran to the windows but then I backed away. I know I was all wet but it could not have been from the firemen's hose. I cannot remember whether I wet myself with a pail of water or somebody threw it at me. I ran back toward the freight elevator through the open aisle which was the last aisle after the machines and I went to the back staircase door. I remember there was a big barrel of oil near that door and when I opened the door and ran through and began to go down the staircase I heard a loud bursting noise. Maybe the barrel of oil exploded.
Anna Pidone
Job: Forelady
9th floor
Interview: September 10, 1957
Kheel Center

17. I was working on the floor at the time of the fire
I was working on the floor at the time of the fire. The first thing I knew about the fire was the heavy smoke coming up from the freight side. There was a table in front of the windows where the fire escape was and they were full of boxes and waists. I pushed the waists away and jumped up on the table and climbed on the fire escape. I and my friend went down the fire escape and I could hear all the screaming and hollering in back of us and I don't know whether it was on the 6 or 7 floor where we opened the window and stepped back in the building.
I still had one foot out on the fire escape when I heard noise and turned around and people were falling, screaming all around. The fire escape collapsed -- no wonder, it was rusty on rust and no good.
I watched from the street. I remember how one man was out on the ledge. In those days they used to wear a chain with a watch across the front. I remember how he jumped and how the chain went up and he sent down.
Abe Gordon
Job: Machinist
9th floor
Interviewed: June 19, 1958
Kheel Center

18. TO THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK:
The following is a portion of the Preliminary Report of the New York Factory Investigating Commission, 1912
TO THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK:
That exits to outside fire-escapes and to interior stairways, especially when they lead through other portions of the loft, were often unknown to many of the operatives. It certainly is necessary to indicate clearly the location of these exits.
A contributing cause to the loss of life in the Triangle Waist Company fire was the lack of clear passageways leading to the fire-escapes and stairways. The employees were so crowded together, seated at tables containing machines, with chairs back to back, that when a great number of them attempted to leave at the same time there was panic and confusion.
In the report made by the Superintendent of the New York Board of Fire Underwriters, it was stated that 20 dead bodies were found near the machines "apparently overcome before they could extricate themselves from the crowded aisles." The necessity for clear and unobstructed passageways to exits should be absolutely insisted upon, otherwise with the slightest panic, even without a fire, severe injuries, if not loss of life, would occur.
Kheel Center

19. 141 Men and Girls Die in Waist Factory Fire; Trapped High Up in Washington Place Building; Street Strewn with Bodies; Piles of Dead Inside
New York Times, March 26, 1911, p. 1.
Three stories of a ten-floor building at the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place were burned yesterday, and while the fire was going on 141 young men and women at least 125 of them mere girls were burned to death or killed by jumping to the pavement below.
The building was fireproof. It shows now hardly any signs of the disaster that overtook it. The walls are as good as ever so are the floors, nothing is the worse for the fire except the furniture and 141 of the 600 men and girls that were employed in its upper three stories.
Most of the victims were suffocated or burned to death within the building, but some who fought their way to the windows and leaped met death as surely, but perhaps more quickly, on the pavements below.
All Over in Half an Hour
Nothing like it has been seen in New York since the burning of the General Slocum. The fire was practically all over in half an hour. It was confined to three floors the eighth, ninth, and tenth of the building. But it was the most murderous fire that New York had seen in many years.
The victims who are now lying at the Morgue waiting for some one to identify them by a tooth or the remains of a burned shoe were mostly girls from 16 to 23 years of age. They were employed at making shirtwaist by the Triangle Waist Company, the principal owners of which are Isaac Harris and Max Blanck. Most of them could barely speak English. Many of them came from Brooklyn. Almost all were the main support of their hard-working families.
There is just one fire escape in the building. That one is an interior fire escape. In Greene Street, where the terrified unfortunates crowded before they began to make their mad leaps to death, the whole big front of the building is guiltless of one. Nor is there a fire escape in the back.
The building was fireproof and the owners had put their trust in that. In fact, after the flames had done their worst last night, the building hardly showed a sign. Only the stock within it and the girl employees were burned.
A heap of corpses lay on the sidewalk for more than an hour. The firemen were too busy dealing with the fire to pay any attention to people whom they supposed beyond their aid. When the excitement had subsided to such an extent that some of the firemen and policemen could pay attention to this mass of the supposedly dead they found about half way down in the pack a girl who was still breathing. She died two minutes after she was found.
The Triangle Waist Company was the only sufferer by the disaster. There are other concerns in the building, but it was Saturday and the other companies had let their people go home. Messrs. Harris and Blanck, however, were busy and ?? their girls and some stayed.
Kheel Center

20. Kheel Center Eyewitness at the Triangle By William Shepherd
The nation learned of the horrible fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company through the eyewitness account of a United Press reporter who happened to be in Washington Square on March 25, He phoned in details while watching the tragedy unfold. At the other end of the telephone, young Roy Howard telegraphed Shepherd's story to the nation's newspapers. This document first published in the Milwaukee Journal, March 27, 1911.
I was walking through Washington Square when a puff of smoke issuing from the factory building caught my eye. I reached the building before the alarm was turned in. I saw every feature of the tragedy visible from outside the building. I learned a new sound--a more horrible sound than description can picture. It was the thud of a speeding, living body on a stone sidewalk.
Thud-dead, thud-dead, thud-dead, thud-dead. Sixty-two thud-deads. I call them that, because the sound and the thought of death came to me each time, at the same instant. There was plenty of chance to watch them as they came down. The height was eighty feet.
The first ten thud-deads shocked me. I looked up-saw that there were scores of girls at the windows. The flames from the floor below were beating in their faces. Somehow I knew that they, too, must come down, and something within me-something that I didn't know was there-steeled me.
I even watched one girl falling. Waving her arms, trying to keep her body upright until the very instant she struck the sidewalk, she was trying to balance herself. Then came the thud--then a silent, unmoving pile of clothing and twisted, broken limbs.
As I reached the scene of the fire, a cloud of smoke hung over the building I looked up to the seventh floor. There was a living picture in each window-four screaming heads of girls waving their arms.
"Call the firemen," they screamed-scores of them. "Get a ladder," cried others. They were all as alive and whole and sound as were we who stood on the sidewalk. I couldn't help thinking of that. We cried to them not to jump. We heard the siren of a fire engine in the distance. The other sirens sounded from several directions.
"Here they come," we yelled. "Don't jump; stay there."
Kheel Center