The Calandra Institute has announced a dedication Ceremony on March 25, 2010,  the 99th Anniversary of the Most Tragic Disaster in NYC History, that is until the Twin Towers on 9-11. 

The list of 146 dead (there were 70 injured) about evenly divided between Italian and Jewish can be found at:
 http://knickerbockervillage.blogspot.com/2009/03/
triangle-shirtwaist-factory-fire-david.html

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in New York City on March 25, 1911, was one of the largest industrial disasters in the history of the city of New York, causing the death of 146 garment workers, almost all of them women, who either died from the fire or jumped from the fatal height. It was the worst workplace disaster in New York City until September 11, 2001. Most women could not escape the burning building because the managers would lock the doors to the stairwells and exits to keep the workers from taking cigarette breaks outdoors during their shifts. Women jumped from the ninth and tenth stories as the ladders on the fire trucks could not reach these. The fire led to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards and helped spur the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, which fought for better and safer working conditions for sweatshop workers in that industry. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was located inside the Asch Building, now known as the Brown Building of Science.          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, on the eighth, ninth and 10th floors of the Joseph J. Asch building, in New York City. Their employers, Isaac Harris and Max Blanck " known throughout the burgeoning shmatte  business as "the shirtwaist kings",They had several locations, but the Trianglewas  the largest blouse-making factory in the city,had managed to beat back unionization attempts by the fledgling International Ladies Garment Workers Union, were successful in getting some mearure of reform.  This was the era when Jews were both owners and workers.  But, the Triangle owners resisted unionization. As a result, 140 of the factory’s workers, most of them young women, would die that Sabbath in one of the most tragic fires in American history.
In his riveting new book, "Triangle: The Fire that Changed America,"  Washington Post reporter David Von Drehle couches the story of the fire in the social and political history of the time. Von Drehle weaves the Triangle episode ...of the Eastern European Jewish experience in America's slavery like "seat shops"  to collide with  Blanck and Harris who were part of the privileged upper class. "Max Blanck was a well-fed, moon-faced man with a big Daddy Warbucks head and beefy hands," writes Von Drehle. "He rode around in a chauffeur-driven car. Isaac Harris was smaller, sharper, with rodentlike features and piercing eyes. They lived in splendor near the Hudson River in neighboring town houses"           http://www.forward.com/articles/8220/

Because the Asch Building was only to be 135 feet tall, it was allowed to have wood floors, wood window frames and trim, instead of the metal trim, metal 
window frames, and stone or concrete floors that would have been required in a 150 feet tall building. Sprinklers were not required but there was to be a fire alarm system as well as a standpipe with hoses on all the floors connecting to a water tank on the roof. The plans called for two staircases,  The plans also included an external iron fire escape on the north wall.On May 7, the Buildings Department issued an objection sheet, indicating that an additional line of fire stairs was required for the building’s area of 10,000 square feet per floor. The examiner also objected to the rear fire escape, indicating that it “must lead to something more substantial than a skylight.” Woolley responded over the next two days, agreeing to correct the objections and requesting an exemption for the other stair. The exemption was granted
Many workers considered Blanck and Harris among the worst employers in the industry. The partners were heedless of the numerous fire and safety fire hazards at their factory. They routinely ignored labor laws aimed at protecting women and children. Employees were expected to work until as late as nine o’clock at night during the busy season, without overtime pay or a supper break, and they were locked in to ensure they would not leave the building. Employees were required to submit their bags for inspection before leaving work and the doors were locked to make sure that everyone complied. Talking and singing were forbidden during working hours;bathroom breaks were monitored; there were fines for errors; and workers had to buy their own needles,thread, and other supplies.
At the time of the Fire, A manager ran to the stairwell for a fire hose, only to realize that the hose had rotted and the water valve had rusted shut. Soon, the room was engulfed with flame and smoke. Most of the occupants of the eighth floor escaped. A few young panic-stricken women, who had not been able to fit into the elevator or reach the crowded fire stairs and fire escape, jumped out of the windows to their deaths. The executive offices on the tenth floor were alerted to the fire. Someone called the fire department, but no one contacted the 260 workers on the ninth floor. 
Few workers knew there was a fire escape in the courtyard since the iron shutters on the courtyard windows were routinely closed. The few workers that found their way onto the rickety seventeen-inch-wide iron fire escape, but, the drop ladder that would have brought them safely to the courtyard below had never been installed. A number of the escape doors had been chained shut to better "control" worker movement, i.e bathroom breaks. The fire department’s life nets were utterly useless to withstand the force of bodies falling from the ninth floor and their ladders were too short to reach the fire floors.
http://www.neighborhoodpreservationcenter.org/
db/bb_files/2003BrownBuilding.pdf

Triangle was a sweatshop: hundreds of workers -- many of them young immigrant girls -- working long hours for low wages in abysmal conditions. The girls, some of them as young as twelve or thirteen, worked fourteen-hour shifts during a 72-hour workweek, and made about $1.50 per week. {2 cents an hour) 

Both the insurance industry and owners preferred a system whereby high premiums were paid instead of requiring safety provisions and paying lower premiums. The Triangle owners did collect a large sum of money from the fire. Twenty three individual suites against the owners of the Asch building, were settled at a rate of seventy five dollars per life lost. 

Book: "The Triangle Fire"  by Leon Stein @ 
http://www.amazon.com/Triangle-Fire-Leon-Stein/
product-reviews/0801487145

Book: "Triangle: The Fire that Changed America". by David von Driehle 
Film: "The Triangle Factory Fire Scandal"  Directed by Emmy-winner Mel Stuart, http://fly.hiwaay.net/~djberry/movies/firescan.htm
 

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