A Memorial to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Honors the Lives Lost and the Continued Importance of Labor Organizing

It was the afternoon of Saturday, March 25, 1911, when a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Greenwich Village in Manhattan. One hundred and forty six people died, the overwhelming majority of them Italian and Jewish immigrant girls and women aged 14 to 43. The event galvanized labor workers and unions that demanded the right to better working conditions around the country, many of which are still in place more than a century later.

Today in New York City, a memorial has been unveiled at the site, which is known now as the Brown Building and is part of the NYU campus. It’s the result of an initiative begun in 2009 by the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition, led by Mary Anne Trasciatti. “There are three plaques on the building right now that talk about the fire,” she explained on a Zoom prior to the unveiling of the memorial. “One explains that it’s landmarked. Stonewall was the first cultural landmark in New York City and this is the second. Another [plaque] says that it’s on the National Register of Historic Places, and then another talks briefly about the history of the fire and why it was important. But people walk right past them. I’ve been standing at the corner right in front of it with my husband and people have come up to us and asked, ‘Could you tell us where the Triangle Building is?’”

It was obvious something more was needed. And so, following the model established by the Vietnam Memorial Committee, Trasciatti and the coalition put together a committee of distinguished architects and scholars. It included Wendy Feuer, the assistant commissioner for urban design and art at the New York City Department of Transportation; Yama Karim, an architect at Studio Libeskind; the fashion designer Yeohlee Teng; and Deborah Berke, dean of architecture at Yale—among others. The members developed a call for proposals. “We were really moved by the response,” Trasciatti said. “It was like 180 entries from more than 30 countries around the world.” The committee eventually settled on the winning design by Uri Wegman and Richard Joon Yoo. It’s called Reframing the Sky.