The following year, on a balmy Saturday afternoon, March 25^th 1911, a fire was started on the 8^th floor of the Asch building that would turn New York into one of the most progressive states of the time.

A cigarette fell into a pile of cotton fabric, and people leapt into a panic. Harris and Blanck were alerted on the tenth floor via telephone call; but went directly to the roof and to an adjacent building instead of notifying the two hundred remaining workers on the 9^th floor. The usual exit at Greene street was already ablaze and blocked with dense smoke. The only viable routes were two small elevators and the fire escape, and the workers were nearly tramping over each other to get to both.

The Damaged Fire Escape, Photo by Brown Brothers

Workers turned against each other, one girl remarked, “I was throwing them out of the way, I was pushing them down. I was only looking out for my own life.” The fire escape was so inundated with people that it was pulled off the building and crumpled, and people tumbled off onto the sidewalk below.

Crowd at the Scene of The Fire, Bain Collection

The elevators were packed, and the operator could only make three trips before workers started jumping into the elevator shaft, trying to slide down the cables; unfortunately many fell, and fatally impacted the elevator. A crowd quickly gathered outside the Asch building in Washington Square Park, while NYU students rushed to help pull workers off the roof. Horse drawn firefighters barreled to the scene, but were ineffective at retrieving those that were still trapped, as their ladders only barely reached the 6^th floor. The day took an even more gruesome turn when one girl stepped out onto the window sash, and then “dropped into space.”

The windows broke and girls whose dresses and hair were scorched began falling out. People clamored around in a frenzy to help, but the safety nets were being ripped out of the hands of the firefighters; they were helpless. Inside, the girls pounded at the Washington Square exit but found it to be locked.

Fire Fighters Rush to the Scene, Bain Collection

Some succumbed to the flames right there on the 8^th and 9^th floor of the Asch building, others chose to embrace their friends and jump towards the street. After the blaze was under control half an hour later, the dead were counted at 145, with one surviving jumper. Fifty three young girls had fallen from the windows, nineteen had fallen into the elevator shaft, twenty were spilled from the fire escape, and fifty more were burned to death inside the factory. According to one reporter, water pumped in the building by the firemen ran red in the gutter.

Identifying the Victims, Bain Collection

Salvatore Maltese, an Italian immigrant, had to bury all the women in his family, his wife Catherine, his daughter Lucia, and his other daughter, Rosaria, who was only fourteen.

This was the only thing that remained of the Triangle factory.