This point marks the Brown Building on Washington Place, a ten-story building that once housed the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.
Last reviewed 16 October 2026 · A three-minute read · 1776–2024
The short answer
Greene Street in New York City borders the Brown Building, a ten-story loft built in 1900–01 for furrier Joseph J. Asch. Its top three floors housed the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, where a fire on March 25, 1911 killed 146 workers. New York University now uses the building for classrooms and labs, with a steel memorial naming the dead on the corner outside.
18 Washington Place at the corner of Greene Street in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, is part of New York University, and is undergoing renovation to become its Academic Resource Center. The building dates fr — 2011 · Beyond My Ken · CC BY-SA 4.0
1900 to 1902
A fireproof loft building drew garment manufacturers
The Brown Building is a ten-story building on Washington Place, now used by New York University for classrooms and science labs. It was built in 1900 and 1901 for a furrier named Joseph J. Asch, who named it after himself. Architects designed it with an iron and steel frame covered in terra cotta, which made it fireproof by the standards of the day. That reputation drew garment manufacturers who feared the fires common in older wooden loft buildings.
In 1902, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire leased the top three floors, the eighth, ninth, and tenth. The company was run by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, and it employed around 500 workers, mostly young immigrant women from Italy and Eastern Europe. Some were as young as fourteen. A year before the fire, thousands of shirtwaist workers across the city went on strike for shorter hours and safer conditions. Triangle refused to sign the union agreement that ended it.
1901 and after
The lot passed from furrier to philanthropist in deed books
The ground under the building has its own paper trail. County records list the lot at Washington Place, a quarter-acre parcel where the building went up in 1901. It passed through the hands of a furrier, a university, and a philanthropist, each change marked in the deed books rather than on any plaque.
March 25, 1911
Locked doors trapped workers as fire swept three floors
On the afternoon of March 25, 1911, a fire broke out on the eighth floor. Historians believe it was started by a dropped match or cigarette in a bin of fabric scraps. It spread through the ninth and tenth floors within minutes. Exit doors on the ninth floor had been locked, workers said later, to stop employees from taking breaks or stealing cloth. The one fire escape collapsed under the weight of people trying to climb down it.
Crowds on the street watched workers jump from the windows. The fire was out within half an hour. It killed 146 people, among them Teresina Saracino, Sarafina Saracino, and Vincenza Pinelli. Blanck and Harris were tried for manslaughter that December and a jury acquitted them. A civil settlement later paid families about $75 for each life lost.
April and December 1911
A rainy funeral procession led to new safety laws
On April 5, 1911, a funeral procession moved through New York in the rain. Seven of the dead had never been identified. Hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets to watch it pass.
The fire led to a state investigation. Governor John Dix signed a law creating the Factory Investigating Commission that June. Robert F. Wagner chaired it, with Al Smith as vice chair. Their work led to new laws: sprinklers, fire drills, exit signs, doors that opened outward, and the eight-hour workday.
1911 to 1929
A donated building was renamed and turned to classrooms
After the fire, Joseph Asch hired architects to fix the building's defects. They added a new fire escape and built two water tanks on the roof. The building kept its name, the Asch Building, and kept being rented out as factory space for years afterward.
New York University began renting floors in the building during the 1910s, and took over more of it through the 1920s. In 1929, a real estate speculator named Frederick Brown bought the building outright and gave it to the university. NYU renamed it the Brown Building in his honor. The top three floors, where the fire had burned fastest, became classrooms.
1991 to 2023
Landmark status and a memorial arrived decades later
The building earned formal recognition decades later. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places and named a National Historic Landmark in 1991. New York City designated it a city landmark in 2003, timed to the fire's 92nd anniversary.
Every March, the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition gathers at the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place to read the names of the dead. The tradition goes back to the fire's 50th anniversary in 1961. In 2023, after years of fundraising and design competitions, the Triangle Fire Memorial was unveiled on the building's corner. Designers Richard Joon Yoo and Uri Wegman stenciled all 146 names into steel panels that catch the sky above the sidewalk.
2020s
Students now study where garment workers once labored
The Brown Building today holds classrooms and research labs for NYU's chemistry and biology departments. Three plaques on its southeast corner name the people who died there, and the steel memorial outside carries all their names in full. Students walk past it to class the way factory workers once walked up for a twelve-hour shift.
The building NYU calls Brown is the same structure where 146 garment workers died in 1911, now filled with students instead of sewing machines.
Read the ground you are standing on
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Minetta Brook, a stream that wound through what is now Greenwich Village, no longer exists on the surface; it was built over as the neighborhood urbanized.
The New York Marble Cemetery, about 600 meters off, holds civil engineer Benjamin Wright, tobacco magnate Pierre Lorillard II, and politician James Tallmadge Jr., among others buried there in the early 1800s.
On March 25, 1911, fire swept the top three floors of this building, trapping workers behind locked doors and killing 146 of them, many of whom jumped from the ninth-floor windows.
Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, who owned the Triangle factory and had locked the exit doors, were tried for manslaughter in December 1911 and a jury acquitted them both.
Governor John Dix signed a bill creating the Factory Investigating Commission in June 1911, chaired by Robert F. Wagner with Al Smith as vice chair, whose work led to sprinkler laws, fire drills and the eight-hour workday.
Real estate investor Frederick Brown bought the former Asch Building and donated it to New York University in 1929, and it was renamed the Brown Building in his honor.
The building became a National Historic Landmark in 1991 and a New York City Landmark on March 25, 2003, chosen deliberately to mark the fire's anniversary.
The Triangle Fire Memorial, designed by Richard Joon Yoo and Uri Wegman and stenciled with the names of all 146 victims, was unveiled at this corner on October 11, 2023.
A pro-Palestinian encampment that grew from about 40 students to hundreds outside the Stern School of Business ended with more than 130 arrests in April 2024.
What happened at the Brown Building on Washington Place?
On March 25, 1911, fire broke out on the eighth floor of the building and spread through the ninth and tenth floors, where the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory operated. Locked exit doors and a collapsing fire escape trapped workers, and 146 people died, many after jumping from the windows.
What was here before NYU used the building?
Before New York University took over the building, it was the Asch Building, built in 1900–01 by furrier Joseph J. Asch and leased from 1902 to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, which employed around 500 immigrant garment workers on its top three floors.
Were the factory owners punished for the fire?
Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, who owned the Triangle factory and had locked the exit doors, were tried for manslaughter in December 1911 and a jury acquitted them both. A 1913 civil settlement paid families roughly $75 for each life lost.
Why is the building now called the Brown Building?
Real estate investor Frederick Brown bought the former Asch Building in 1929 and donated it to New York University, which renamed it the Brown Building in his honor.
Is there a memorial to the Triangle fire victims at this location?
Yes, the Triangle Fire Memorial, designed by Richard Joon Yoo and Uri Wegman and stenciled with the names of all 146 victims, was unveiled at the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place on October 11, 2023.
What safety laws resulted from the fire?
Governor John Dix signed a bill creating the Factory Investigating Commission in June 1911, chaired by Robert F. Wagner with Al Smith as vice chair, whose work led to sprinkler laws, fire drills, outward-opening doors, and the eight-hour workday.
