The Place

Today is the 100th anniversary of the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire. One hundred forty-six workers, almost all young Italian and Jewish seamstresses, perished after fire broke out on the eighth floor of a 10-story building near Washington Square in Manhattan. The scene of the tragedy, the Asch Building (how achingly onomatopoetic was its name), still stands. Now part of New York University, it has been renamed the Brown Building of Science.

You don’t need me to tell you the story of that fateful, horrific day a century ago and how the nation responded with a more vibrant labor movement and safety laws to protect workers. Over the last week there have been quite a few newspaper articles and TV memorials (among the best: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-mind-set-that-survived-the-triangle-shirtwaist-fire/2011/03/22/ABh20rEB_story.html#).

My brother, sister and I grew up immersed in the community of small apparel factories in the neighborhood of the Triangle along Broadway north of Houston Street. Among our earliest memories are our father’s Manhattan factories, beginning in the early 1950s with the one at 718 Broadway near 8th Street and ending almost 30 years later at 611 Broadway at the corner of Houston, with stops along the way at 683 and 692 Broadway (for reference points, 692 Broadway is the building that housed Tower Records; 611 is where Crate & Barrel has a store).

At its zenith, our father’s business of making half slips and panties, and later knit shirts, employed 60, all but two—James and Ricky—Afro-American or Puerto Rican women. He ran a non-union shop, never, to my knowledge, challenged by the ILGWU (the International Ladies Garment Workers Union). The union knew our father—and mother— ran an honest, fair firm. His workers stayed with him for decades.

Lucy. Salita. Eloise. Big Mary. I can still see them vividly in my mind, each one standing or sitting at her station. Lucy was the floor foreman. Salita affixed labels. Eloise sat at the end of the line, sewing lace to the half slips. Big Mary sat at the other end of the line stitching fronts and backs together. The factory would open around 8:30 am, the workers would leave at 4:30. Our parents would finally depart for home around 6. Little Mary would saunter in around 11:30, after sending her kids off to school, and maybe after taking a snort or two. She sat two tables down from Big Mary. She’d often take a break from her Merro sewing machine to rest her head on folded arms. I once asked my father why he tolerated her lax behavior. Because, he replied, she was the fastest sewer he had. She turned out more in the short time she worked than any of the “full-time” operators.

Operators. That’s what the women were called. The sewers got paid by piece work. The more tickets of each batch they collected the more they made each week. Our mother handled payroll. Payday was Wednesday, in cash, in small manila money envelopes, the type that opened from the top.

The factory, or as our family called it, “The Place,” was a bee hive of noise with sewing machines buzzing out bursts of stitches, tall upright industrial fans beating the stagnant air, street noises filtering in through open windows, and our father screaming to be heard above the machinery. He was always screaming, never really in anger, just screaming as part of his perpetual motion. And yet, in the late afternoon hours, when the activity started to die down, as he’d be hunched over a Merro machine trying to coax it back into life, he’d start singing a song. No song in particular, just a melody of contentment. More often than not he’d open up the old Coca-Cola machine and pass out drinks.

I have fond memories of visiting The Place. Though he offered three times my 1972 starting salary of $7,800 as a newspaper reporter to join him (equal to roughly $125,000 in today’s dollars), I couldn’t work for, not with, my father. Chalk it up to the age-old conflict between fathers and sons. Let’s leave it at that.