This is the northwest corner of the intersection between Greene Street and Washington place. Here, on an afternoon in 1911, 146 immigrants died in the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire. Years later, in 1944, Victor Joseph Gatto came here to paint a tribute to the lives lost to negligence. Today, I came here to create a tribute to Gatto.
Now dominated by NYU buildings, street signs, and college students, the northwest corner is difficult to pinpoint; in the painting, it is dominated by horse-drawn carriages and men in top hats. Where there is smoke in the painting, there is sky in the photo (top right). My photo shows too much of the street and not enough of the building on the right. However, I found it impossible to incorporate much of that building at all. It must have been rebuilt further to the right, possibly to widen the street that is leading to the vanishing point.
Gatto used the fire as the vanishing point,, and it was therefore the last part of the painting that my eye saw. Perhaps he was pointing out the lack of attention that had been paid to the factory and its abused workers. Even when it was on fire, it wasn’t as important as the buildings around it.
Gatto framed the building in the red of fire. You could not have fully achieved his perspective with a photograph since he employed artistic freedom rights to make this painting.