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Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire
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Futile escape route Chronicling the horror Rose Rosenfeld Freedman, as a young woman, sits in a carved wooden chair wearing a patterned dress and looking at the camera in an early 20th-century black and white portrait. Mourning the dead Rows of shirt-shaped fabric cutouts hang in front of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory building in New York at the Triangle Fire Memorial dedication, with a fire truck ladder extended above.
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Futile escape route
Futile escape route The lone fire escape from the building that housed the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory collapsed on March 25, 1911, as terrified workers tried to flee the flames that claimed 146 lives.

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire

How a preventable tragedy changed workplace safety in the United States
Written by
Tracy Grant
Tracy Grant is a senior editor at Encyclopaedia Britannica. She previously served as editor in chief, the first woman to hold that title. 
Tracy Grant
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Britannica Editors
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
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•History

Shortly before 5:00 pm on March 25, 1911, the approximately 500 people working at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory on the 8th, 9th, and 10th floors of the Asch Building were preparing for their shifts to end. They worked in cramped, dirty, and unsafe conditions, sewing the shirtwaist, a popular blouse of the time. But when a fire erupted—probably the result of smoking—it took less than 20 minutes for 146 people, most of them young women,...

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