Fontbonne students visit Triangle Factory fire site
Students from Fontbonne Hall Academy got a close-up view of a historic site when they recently took a walking tour of Greenwich Village and stood outside the building where the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire took place in 1911.
Members of the Fontbonne Hall Academy Scholar Society took part in a walking tour titled the “Immigrant, Radical, Notorious Women of Washington Square” and listened intently as tour guide Joyce Gold, a historian, described the circumstances of the devastating fire and discussed how the deadly blaze helped to galvanize the labor movement in the U.S.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which took place on March 25, 1911, was one of the deadliest industrial disasters in U.S. history. The fire killed 146 garment workers, most of them young immigrant women between the ages of 16 and 23.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was located on the eighth, ninth and 10th floors of the 10-story Asch Building at 23-29 Washington Place. The building is still standing. It is known today as the Brown Building and is currently owned by New York University.