The Guardian Spirit of the Triangle Fire

In March of 1911 a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York City. It lasted eighteen minutes. Within this short period of time 146 people perished most were young Jewish and Italian immigrant women.

Sixty-two of these young women leapt to their deaths preferring this to being burned alive.

The Triangle Shirtwaist factory was a typical sweatshop of its day. Some of the workers were as young a 13 and all worked fourteen hour days, six days a week for 6 to 7 dollars a week.

The companies 500 workers were crowded into three upper floors of the Triangle building. The year before many of the workers had gone on strike for better working conditions. On the day of the fire the exit doors were locked in order to keep the workers in and union organizers out.

When the fire started it leaped from one pile of discarded fabric to the next. Several workers started down the outside fire escape. But less than 20 made it down before it collapsed killing several girls.

A shipping clerk tried to fight the flames with a fire hose but the water had no pressure.

Many workers jammed onto the service elevator but as it made its slow trips the flames and smoke engulfed the rooms so more workers jumped into the shaft as the elevator descended. Some managed to grab briefly onto the cables that held it in place but most fell on top of it. This added weight forced it to snap free of its cables and crash to the bottom of the shaft.

Others waited at the windows hoping for a rescue from the fire trucks below. But as the fireman raised their ladders they realized they were too short--they reached only to the sixth floor. They also found the water from their hoses did not reach the entire upper floor.

William Shepherd, a UPI reporter, was across the street when flames started licking out of the eighth and ninth floors. It is his account which told the story that evolved into the legend of the guardian spirit he called his office with a dramatic report that was sent by telegraph operators simultaneously across America.

Shepherd saw, way above him, a young man helping a young woman to the ninth floor windowsill. The young man held her out the window and let her drop. The man reached back into the flames, held a second girl out the window and then a third, letting them drop.

None of the girls resisted, “as if,” reported Shepherd, “he were helping them into a street car instead of into eternity.”

A fourth girl put her arms around the man in the window and kissed him, perhaps impulsively for the first time or simply for the last. Then he held her out of the window and dropped her 100 feet to the sidewalk below. Shepherd wrote, “I saw his face. He had done his best.”

Those who jumped into the fireman’s nets crashed through them. A witness reported seeing the fireman’s bloodied hands as they tried to hold tight. Sometimes two or three women jumped together, holding hands.

“The fire alarm was sounded at 4:45 p.m. and at 4:57 p.m. the final worker fell from the ninth floor, onto an iron hook on the sixth floor, where she hung burning and then, about a minute later, with a thud onto the street below.”

It is not known how the fire started, perhaps a lit cigarette, or maybe the oil from the sewing machines lit rags in bins. Afterwards a fire chief said he came upon skeletons bending over sewing machines.

The two owners of the factory were bought to trail but they were acquitted because they had not broken any laws.

As a result of the Triangle Fire laws for fire compensation and child labor were put in place. It also inspired a massive unionization movement in the country.

This building is considered haunted today.

The Brown Building is a 10-story historic structure located in New York’s Greenwich Village. I wrote about the terrible fire that occurred in this building when the Shirtwaist Triangle Factory occupied it in 1911. *

In this post I talked about the famous sighting of a guardian angel that helped woman jump out of the building --this death preferable to death by fire.

This fire damaged the top three floors of the building which is where the factory part of the business was located. It spread quickly and took the lives of 146 people--mostly young women. The Shirtwaist Triangle fire was the worst industrial disaster in New York City’s history.

After these top floors were refurbished in 1916 New York University used the eighth floor for classrooms and a library. A local philanthropist, Frederick Brown then purchased the building in 1929 and donated it to the University. The building was renamed the Brown Building in his honor.

Today the Brown Building is a National Historic Landmark and the University’s Silver Center for Arts and Sciences is located here.

In the years since the Shirtwaist Triangle Fire many students and faculty members have stepped forward to state they feel the building is haunted by some of the victims of the 1911 fire.

It is said that activity occurs throughout the building but the top 3 floors where the fire raged is where most of this activity is noticed.

On the 9th floor, which houses the University’s Center for Developmental Genetics strange noises are heard. Some have reported whispers and others have heard female voices crying for help.

Yet other witnesses in this area have reported smelling smoke. This smoke aroma is noticed in other parts of the building as well--this is unusual because no smoking is allowed in any of the buildings used by the university.

Many students, respectful of what happened still state that the building makes them feel uncomfortable.

In the late evening hours on the top three floors female apparitions and dark figures have been seen that then just fade away.

Phantom footsteps are heard throughout the building and one elevator always goes to the upper floors even when the buttons have not been pushed.

* At this time the building was called the Asch Building.