Hofstra professor leads effort to honor victims of 1911 fire

Mary Anne Trasciatti, president of the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition and a professor of rhetoric at Hofstra, comes from a family of garment workers.

Courtesy Ginny Greenberg

The Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire of 1911 is the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of Manhattan, killing 146 people, mostly immigrant women.

Courtesy Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition

Richard Joon Yoo and Uri Wegman's winning memorial design includes the names of all 146 victims, which will be engraved on a steel panel and reflected directly below in another panel that tells the story of the event.

Courtesy Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition

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Over a century after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire claimed the lives of 146 garment workers, the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition has secured funding for a permanent memorial at the site to honor the victims of the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of New York City.

Long Beach resident Mary Anne Trasciatti, a professor of rhetoric at Hofstra University and the president of the coalition, is spearheading the effort. She led a panel discussion at Hofstra on March 8, commemorating the 105th anniversary of the fire, which spurred improvements in factory safety and the rise of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. Trasciatti detailed the plans for the structure that will honor those who died.

Of the 146 victims of the fire that swept through the eighth, ninth and 10th floors of the Asch Building in Manhattan on Saturday afternoon, March 25, 1911, 123 were women, most of them Italian or Jewish immigrants. Of the 150 historical monuments of all kinds scattered throughout the borough, only five commemorate women, according to Trasciatti, who teaches a women’s studies course at Hofstra, and that makes this memorial even more important, she said.

“The building too often bears silent witness; we want it to speak eloquently,” she said at the panel discussion. “We believe it’s time to break the architectural silence around women in our communities.”

The building that housed the blouse factory still stands in Greenwich Village, a block east of Washington Square Park, and is now owned by New York University. In 2012, the coalition signed an agreement with the school that permitted it to install a memorial, and the following year it held a design competition, which attracted 170 entries from more than 30 countries.