The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory

The Triangle Waist Company occupied the eighth, ninth and tenth floors of the Asch Building off Washington Square. The workers were mostly Jewish and Italian immigrant women and girls, the youngest fourteen.

Fire started in a rag bin on the eighth floor twenty minutes before the end of a Saturday shift. The eighth floor and the tenth were telephoned. The ninth was not.

The door to the Washington Place stairs was locked - the company locked it to stop workers leaving with stolen goods. The single fire escape twisted and collapsed under the weight of people on it. The fire ladders reached the sixth floor.

Sixty-two people jumped or fell from the ninth-floor windows while a crowd below watched and the nets tore.

A hundred and forty-six died. The two elevator operators, Joseph Zito and Gaspar Mortillalo, made trip after trip until the rails buckled under the heat and the cars would no longer run; people were jumping down the shaft onto the roofs of their cars.

A hundred thousand marched in the funeral procession and four hundred thousand watched. Nearly every fire and labour law in New York State comes from it.