Site of the 1911 fire that killed 146 garment workers, mostly young immigrant women—now an NYU classroom building with a National Historic Landmark plaque on its exterior.
23-29 Washington Place, New York, NY 10003
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Exterior and memorial plaques freely accessible; building interior is NYU classrooms (no public access).
Access
Wheelchair OK
Flat Greenwich Village sidewalks
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1901 · Site of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire · 146 killed—deadliest NYC workplace disaster until 9/11 · National Historic Landmark (1991) · New York City Landmark (2003) · Catalyst for New York State labor and fire-safety legislation
The Asch Building, a ten-story neo-Renaissance structure completed in 1900-01 at the corner of Washington Place and Greene Street in Greenwich Village, was considered fireproof—its floors and exterior walls were non-combustible. The Triangle Shirtwaist Company, which manufactured women's blouses on the 8th, 9th, and 10th floors, was not.
On the afternoon of Saturday, March 25, 1911, a fire started—likely from a discarded cigarette or match near scrap fabric—and spread through the cutting room on the 8th floor. Exits to the Washington Place stairway were locked; management had ordered them secured to prevent theft and to force workers to exit only past the Greene Street stairway where bags could be checked. Some workers escaped via the Greene Street stairs and fire escape, but the iron fire escape buckled and collapsed under the weight of fleeing workers. Others were killed on the Washington Place side, where the locked door trapped them.
The final toll was 146 dead: the youngest victims were 14-year-olds Kate Leone and Rosaria Maltese; the oldest was 43-year-old Providenza Panno. Factory owners Max Blanck and Isaac Harris were indicted for manslaughter but acquitted.
In 1929, real estate speculator Frederick Brown donated the building to New York University, which renamed it. NYU still uses the Brown Building for undergraduate biology classrooms. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991, designated a National Historic Landmark the same year, and received New York City landmark status on March 25, 2003—the 92nd anniversary of the fire. Bronze memorial plaques on the exterior list the victims' names. An annual commemoration organized by the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition is held at the building each March 25th.
Sources
NYU public safety officer Dennis Kroner, who has been posted at the Brown Building's entrance since 1983 and became an informal expert on the Triangle fire, offered the most candid firsthand account in a 2015 NYU news feature. Unlocking a door to a hidden stairwell, he said: 'I know the building is haunted, because you can feel it. But I've never seen ghosts or anything.' His statement is notable precisely because it lacks theatricality—a building-safety employee, not a paranormal promoter.
Boroughs of the Dead, a New York ghost-tour company, published an essay on the phenomenon of residual hauntings at historic disaster sites and specifically examined the Brown Building. Their researchers found that the most often-repeated graphic accounts—apparitions of sooty women, choking sensations in the hallways, smoke smells—traced almost entirely to sources with commercial interests in the paranormal. They concluded there were no credible first-person accounts from unaffiliated witnesses documenting apparitional experiences inside.
What does exist is more ambient: the building is a working NYU science facility, and many people who have spent time in the upper floors describe a general unease they find hard to attribute to anything structural. The Washington Place facade still faces the same sidewalk where passersby watched people fall in 1911. The memorial plaques list 146 names. The annual March 25th commemoration draws hundreds.
View the bronze memorial plaques on the Washington Place and Greene Street facades commemorating the 146 workers who died on March 25, 1911. A stop on multiple Greenwich Village ghost and labor-history walking tours.
A 2-hour walking tour covering the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory site alongside Washington Square Park's Potter's Field, the House of Death, and other Greenwich Village dark-history stops.
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