Photos from the Triangle

Today marks the 99th anniversary of the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which killed 146 people in 1911. It remains one of New York's deadliest workplace disasters.







Images courtesy NYPL.

Many publications offered up images of the fire, such as these from McClure's Magazine. This visual media brought the horror into homes across the country. Middle-class readers of McClure's were faced with the reality that many of their shirtwaists, dresses, stockings, suspenders, trousers, and shoes were produced under unethical conditions in factories like these. While the workers and the unions had been protesting for years, the Triangle encouraged the middle and upper-middle classes to join the fight in earnest.

Today there are many ways you can honor those who died in the fire and all those who fought for factory reforms - join the memorial service in front of the building, off Washington Square Park, at noon, or come to the Tenement Musuem's talk tonight with Kevin Baker, historical novelist; Steven Greenhouse, New York Times labor reporter; and our own Annie Polland, vice president of education. (Those of you looking forward to hearing David Von Drehle, author of Triangle - he has unfortunately had to cancel due to an illness in the family.)

Tenement Talks Inspiration

While listening to Michelle and James Nevius talk about their new book Inside The Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City last Monday, it became clear to me that history is everywhere – down every street and inside each building. I was inspired to find out what stories I could unearth about the Greenwich Village brownstone I lived in during my first year of college.

My search for the past started at 147 West 4th Street. Even when I was living there, it was obvious from the antiquated fixtures and detailed crown moldings that history had moved up and down the wraparound staircase, through the doorways, and over the creaky wooden floor planks.

A simple internet search revealed that I had inhabited a unique piece of history. Around 1918, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney created the Whitney Studio Club at 147 West 4th Street. This artist sanctuary served as the precursor to the Whitney Museum where works by acclaimed artists such as Edward Hopper were first exhibited; and in a rented room atop the studio, John Reed, the journalist and socialist, compiled the series of articles that became his masterpiece - Ten Days That Shook the World.

In this busy city it's easy to forget to look at the past, but with just a bit of digging, I was able to discover my hidden gem that better connected me to the city I love.

If you missed James & Michelle's talk, listen to a podcast, now up on the Tenement Talks page of our website.

- Posted by Tenement Talks intern Ariel Kouvaras

Questions for Curatorial - New York's Lack of Alleyways

Curatorial Director Dave answers your questions.

Why are there no alleys in New York as there are in other American and European cities?

The almost complete lack of alleys in Manhattan above Chambers Street is partly the result of the 1811 Commissioner’s Plan (pictured left), which created the grid-based street pattern seen in New York today. Intended to rationalize the future development of the city, the 1811 Plan called for twelve avenues running north and south to be crossed at right angles by streets running east and west, with standardized lots 20 to 25 by 100 feet stretching unbroken on each block. This overwhelming rectangularity was intended to achieve the plan’s stated goals, which included “a free and abundant circulation of air” and the construction of “straight-sided and right-angled houses [that] are the most cheap to build.”

Sections of Manhattan laid out prior to 1811, including areas of lower Manhattan and Greenwich Village, today feature alleys as artifacts of a pre-planned city. The elite and influential New Yorkers charged in 1807 with establishing a comprehensive street plan for Manhattan viewed alleyways as dangerous to the health and well-being of the city and its inhabitants. Indeed, the plan they conceived appears to have been intended to discourage alleys in the city’s future development. John Randel Jr., who mapped the plan, wrote that the grid was created in part out of a concern for “avoiding the frequent error of laying out short, narrow, and crooked streets, with alleys and courts, endangering extensive conflagrations, confined air, and unclean streets…”

According to historical geographer Reuben Skye Rose-Redwood, “One of the most fundamental, yet unstated, presumptions of the grid plan was that it would literally obliterate nearly everything that stood in its path—clearing away the ‘disorder’ of the past to make way for an ‘improved’ future.” Above all, the commissioners sought to level Manhattan’s natural landscape and bring every inch of the city into productive use by facilitating the sale and distribution of land through a systematic standardization. Rectangular, uniform lots eliminated waste by reducing the number of oddly shaped pieces of land, which in other urban areas sometimes result in alleys. In contrast, the 1811 grid plan helped commodify the Manhattan landscape, dividing all available land into easily measurable, conveniently saleable units. With few exceptions, the plan did not designate land to be set aside for public parks and squares.

Historic Preservation Society's Oral History Project

In a new oral history project on its website, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, which is lobbying for historic district designation for the South Village, looks back over the decades at well-known preservation efforts in the area, including several urban planners' campaigns to prevent Robert Moses from extending Fifth Avenue through Washington Square Park.


Washington Square Park in 1950

-posted by Liana Grey